


build god, then we'll talk

by robomori



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Coming of Age, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-29 21:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20442728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robomori/pseuds/robomori
Summary: In 2025, Dr. Newt Geiszler drifts with a Kaiju brain to save the planet and gets his brain infected by the Precursors. In 2035, they use him in an attempt to eradicate humanity. This is his story.





	build god, then we'll talk

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to all of the twelve people in the pacific rim fandom.
> 
> the idea for this fic generated after seeing Uprising, because it made me upset, and I wanted to fix that by giving newt a recovery arc. then i figured i might incorporate his backstory as a first part because that's something i'd wanted to explore for a long time. then i had to split the thing in two because it got out of hand and ended up way too long — which is, if you know me at all, not in the least surprising. so, yeah. this is my love letter to newt geiszler. sue me for being vain.
> 
> special thanks to my friend [clint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsonthemoon/pseuds/demonsonthemoon), this huge nerd, for helping me out with the pacrim lore, listening to me ramble about this story for a literal year and a half and for beta-reading this first part once it was finally done. this story is mostly pure self-indulgence, but a big part of me doing this was for you, too, and it wouldn't have been the same if you weren't involved.
> 
> the title is a song by panic! at the disco — again, if you know me: not surprising. the lyrics of the song itself have nothing to do with the story, i just thought the name fit terribly well. 
> 
> so. here's part one. newt's entire life. hope it does him justice.
> 
> warnings: parental emotional abuse, misgendering, dysphoria

“That’s good,” Newt’s dad says as his son presses down on the piano keys. “And then — there, yes, very good.  _ Gott _ , you’re going to be a real little Mozart,” he says. “You’re already so much better at this than I was when I first started playing. So much younger, too.”

“How old were you?” Newt asks. He stops playing to look at his dad. It’s not a good position — hurts his neck, and he can’t even see behind him properly. He shifts back towards the piano.

“Eight,” his dad says. “That’s four years older than you are — twice your age.”

“I know how much eight is,” Newt says. He’s staring at the keys — they’re like thin black teeth sitting on bigger, white ones.

“Sure, you know,” his dad says then, and Newt can hear him laugh softly. “Do you know how old I am?”

“Thirty-nine,” Newt says.

“And how much older than you does that make me?”

Newt takes a moment to think — one second, two, three — “Thirty-five,” he says then.

Dad claps his hands in front of Newt. “ _ Bravo _ ,” he says, and Newt smiles, proud.

“Doing that isn’t gonna help her accomplish anything in life, you know,” a voice says. Newt and his dad both turn around. His mom is standing there, in the living room. She’s wearing her long white coat, holding a cigarette close to her mouth as she exhales the smoke like a dragon. 

His mom uses  _ her _ when she talks about Newt — everybody does, at the time, even his father and his uncle Illia. They all use  _ her _ and that name Newt was born with that isn’t  _ Newt _ , because nobody knows he is not a girl, not even him.

“She can do math at four,” his mom says — spits. “So what? She’s just going to be hated for being an arrogant little bitch who thinks she knows everything better than the others.”

The thing is, Newt  _ does  _ know everything better, but he doesn’t say that. He rarely says anything whenever Mom is around.

“She’s not arrogant,” Dad says. “She’s a genius. She’s gonna do great things.”

Newt’s mom sighs. “Yeah, keep telling her that,” she says. “Feed her ego with too much praise, make her as pretentious as possible — I’m sure she’ll be very easy to live with when she’s a twelve years old megalomaniac. Can’t wait to live with an insufferable teenage know-it-all.” She doesn’t bother looking at Newt as she speaks ; not once. Then she turns around, dropping ashes on the carpet. 

“I’m going out,” she says. “Don’t wait for me. I’ve already told Brigitte to only cook for three.” And then she’s gone.

Dad sighs.

Newt lets a few seconds of silence trickle by before asking, “Does mom hate me?” He tries to look his dad in the eyes again. The position still makes his neck hurt.

Dad smiles. “No,” he says. “Of course not. She’s your mother.”

But mothers are supposed to be sweet and nice and loving, so why isn’t she?

“Let’s get back to playing, shall we?” Dad says. “Come on. I’ll sing.”

Newt turns around again. He places his fingers on the keys. They look like they’re going to eat his hands.

“Will you sing with me?” Dad says.

“Yes,” Newt says. And then he starts playing. “ _ Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann… _ ”

_

“You want to do something after?” Uncle Illia asks as they enter the gym. “To celebrate.”

“Don’t say we’re going to celebrate anything when you don’t know if I’m going to win yet,” Newt snaps. His father has pointed out many times that Newt gets mean when he’s nervous. Newt knows it’s true, and he hates it — he sounds like his mother, and he hates it. 

Uncle Illia scoffs. “Of course you’re gonna win,” he says, as if a seven years old beating a bunch of pre-teens was the simplest truth in the word, as if even starting to think the opposite was pure idiocy.

And Uncle Illia was right, as he often is. Newt wins — he doesn’t get the fourth place, or the third, or the second — he’s first, he  _ wins _ . He gets the gold medal, all plastic and shimmery paint. He stands proudly between two kids way taller than him that look pissed off even when they get their reward, because they’ve been beaten by a girl that’s five years younger than they are.

Newt did that — he did  _ that _ . He beat them, and he’s a king.

“I told you so,” Uncle Illia tells him when he gets down from the makeshift podium. “Now, how should we celebrate?”

“Thank you,” Newt says instead of answering. He’s holding the metal in his hands, even if the red ribbon it’s attached to does a perfect job of holding it to his neck. “For teaching me all of this — this is all thanks to you.”

Uncle Illia smiles softly. “No, kiddo,” he says, putting a hand behind Newt’s back. “It’s thanks to you. I could teach any kid your age what I taught you, but none of them would be able to do what you do, to think how you think. You’re special.” 

Illia’s thumb is tracing circles on the back of Newt’s neck. It’s relaxing. “He would have loved to be there, you know,” he says.

“I know, Newt says. “I’m not mad at him.”

And it’s true, he’s not. Except for Newt’s mother’s shows, Dad rarely gets to play in any concert, let alone one where his name is big on the poster. It’s good that someone finally saw that he was good, that he deserved to be recognized for that, and if Newt is mad at anything, it’s that he couldn’t be there to see the crowd clapping for him instead of praising his mother, for once.

She deserves it, of course she does. She’s a great singer. Everyone says it — the critics and the newspaper and the audience, and even Newt can tell that she’s good. Hell, she’s the second best soprano in Germany right after Monica Schwartz.

She deserves all the hype, really, but that doesn’t mean Newt will give her anything. He would consider it if  _ she _ considered giving him a good night kiss, or reading him bedtime stories, or smiling for anything else than press pictures.

“Your mom too,” Uncle Illia. “She would have been there if she could.”

“Yeah,” Newt says. “I know.” But it’s a lie. They both know it’s a lie.

What they do to celebrate is go to that ice cream place in Mitte that Newt loves. They both have double orders: stracciatella-strawberry for Newt, lemon-pistachio for Uncle Illia. They eat in a comfortable silence, Newt’s medal hanging between his chest and the table, weighing nothing because it’s plastic, but still here, a proof that Newt made it.

They go back home when they’re done. There’s nobody there except for Brigitte, the maid. Uncle Illia asks Newt if he’s tired, and when Newt says no, offers to go fishing. Newt says yes.

Uncle Illia fishes, actually. Newt doesn’t know how it’s done and to be honest, he doesn’t really care about it anyway. Fishing requires too much patience and calm that he can never have — he just likes hanging out with his uncle by the river. Uncle Illia does hand him the rod from time to time, and Newt even has it in his hand when the second fish bites, even if Illia has to grab it back to pull. It’s big and edible and healthy, and they decide they’re going to cook it when they’re back home.

Newt often wonders why they have a maid to take care of the food for them when Uncle Illia is as good of a cook as her, and loves spending time in the kitchen.

“Butter and herbs,” he tells Newt about the fish. “It’s all it takes. It’s not much, but it makes a big difference.”

Newt’s dad is already home when they enter the big hall. “My little champion!” he shouts as soon as he sees them entering the living room. He takes Newt in his arms, then takes a closer look at the medal. “I knew you’d make it.”

“That’s what I kept telling her,” Uncle Illia says from behind, “but she wouldn’t believe me.”

But the thing is, Newt did — he knew he would win. He knows he’s better than any kid in his class, because if he’s there when they’re two years older than them, there’s got to be a reason. The thing is, Newt only pretends to be nervous at these contests, because he’s been told over and over — behind his back, never directly addressed at him — that he’s a pretentious little shit who will never make any friends by acting like what he knows he is.

And it’s funny, really, because being modest and looking unconfident hasn’t brought him any friends either.

“You beat them all,” Newt’s dad says. “My little girl is the best.” He’s smiling hard.

“How was your concert?” Newt asks.

“Great,” Dad says with sparks in his voice. “They loved it — there were critics and all. I hope I did good — I wouldn’t want to have a bad paper written on me after that.”

“I’m sure you did amazing,” Newt replies. Then he adds “I wish I’d been there.”

Dad laughs. “Don’t be silly. You had your own thing to attend to. You can watch me play everyday.” But not in front of a crowd, not when the attention is on him and not on  _ her _ . “Anyway,” Dad continues. “I should be the one complaining! I missed my daughter’s first trophy!”

Newt shrugs. “There will be others,” he says.

Uncle Illia smiles. “See? Even you say it now. You’re made to win, kid.”

_

Newt is eleven at the time of the Monica Schwartz and Elizabeth Binkerhoff scandal.

He sees it on a newspaper first, and picks it up because it has his mother’s name on the cover. Monica Schwartz has always been a bad word in their home, and he’s curious. “Fucking Monica,” Newt had heard his mom say once, perhaps more. “She had to take that, too.”

“Of course she’s angry at Monica,” Uncle Illia had said when Newt had asked him about it, not daring to ask his father, let alone his mother. “She’s your mom’s biggest and most notorious rival. Imagine working your butt off, day and night, doing your best, only to be beaten by the same exact person over and over again. Everytime she performs, it ends up being about Monica: Elizabeth Binkerhoff has given a spectacular show tonight, but will her voice stay in our hearts after we hear Schwartz’s new play next week?”

Newt couldn’t really imagine, no, because he had always been the best in his class. Uncle Illia had once told him that one day, he would have to prove himself, that it would not always be that easy. There would be people as smart as him, or smarter, and Newt would have to work. He might be the youngest genius in Berlin right now, but he’ll have to catch up with the rest of the world at some point.

“Did they fight?” Newt had asked. “Monica and my mom.”

“I don’t think they really know each other,” Illia had said, dragging on his cigarette. “Not personally, at least. They’ve probably met through parties and galas — you know how it is.” Newt doesn’t really know, no, because he’s spent all of the galas his parent have taken him to avoiding grown-ups trying to talk to him. “But I don’t think they’ve had a fight, no. Your mother is just a very proud, very angry woman.”

That had seemed easy to believe, at the time. It made sense — it sounded true.

Except Illia was lying, apparently. 

Newt sees the newspaper as he’s out fetching Illia’s cigarettes — Hans, the corner shop guy, only lets him buy them because he knows the Geiszlers, and Newt has stopped counting how many times he’s told him he would break all ten of Newt’s fingers if he ever caught him smoking. Newt notices the big letters on the cover page when he’s waiting for Hans to give him his change back.  _ Monica Schwartz and Elizabeth Binkerhoff: the unspeakable truth, ten years later _ . He tells Hans to keep the change, takes the newspaper, and starts reading on his way home.

_ Tonight, the internationally known opera singer Monica Schwartz decides to open up about her private life, but more than that, about a secret she has never disclosed before. “I don’t think I can take it anymore,” she says. “Keeping this for myself. I’ve done it for eleven years, now, and I’ve regretted every minute of it.” She takes a long pause. “Jacob Geiszler and I had an affair in 1989. We had a child that I left to him and Elizabeth.” _

_ Schwartz then goes on about her past relationship with Geiszler, who we now know as one of Germany’s best contemporary pianists: they were very young at the time, and the affair was a mistake, but she doesn’t regret deciding to give birth to the child. “What I regret is not staying close to her. Like I said, I was very young, and leaving was what everyone advised me to do. My manager told me I couldn’t risk ruining my career, and I listened because I was scared. There was so much pressure, I didn’t know what to do. At the time, it seemed that it was best for everyone if our daughter stayed with Jacob and his wife, and I haven’t seen her since. So yes, I do regret leaving her behind, even if I don’t know what kind of a mother I would have been. I hope she forgives me one day. I hope I can try to be her mom.” _

_ When asked about whether or not her newly revealed daughter knew about the situation, Monica didn’t appear to know much more than we do. “As I said before, I haven’t had any contact with her since the day I left. Jacob never said if he told her or not.” _

_ But what about Binkerhoff? Surely, the hostile relationship the two singers always seemed to have despite not talking to each other is due to that affair. “Of course I understand that Elizabeth doesn’t adore me,” Schwartz says. “But despite what happened, she has been extremely forgiving and kind to me, which I am so, so thankful for. I don’t know if I would have had that strength if I had been in her shoes. Everyone keeps building us up as mortal enemies, but we are on friendly terms, despite being rivals. I am certainly glad she could get past that event in our lives, and I hope I can forgive myself too, one day.” She takes a pause to drink some water from the bottle next to her. “I can never thank her enough for having taken care of my daughter all these years. Elizabeth is, in a way, her mother too, and I’m sure she has been a great one.” _

Newt stops reading. He has stopped walking, too. His vision is blurred. After a pause, body on autopilot, he resumes his journey. He gets through the ten minutes left of it with the paper and Illia’s cigarettes in one hand and the other one clenched in a fist. He’s got his headphones on, but his walkman isn’t playing any sound. In his head, there’s nothing but the buzzing noise of sheer anger and the words he’s read, repeated in a stranger’s voice, over and over.

Illia is in the dining room when he gets home. He doesn’t say anything until Newt gets to his level and throws the cigarettes on the table with a violence he didn’t know he was capable of. He doesn’t give Illia the time to protest, because the next thing Newt slams in front of him is the newspaper. Illia reaches for the reading glasses that are resting on his chest, held by a cord around his neck. Newt had tried these exact glasses on after the nurse at school had told him he probably should have a check-up when he was nine. In the end, he chose very different glasses — green and blue with a little dinosaur on the left side. One of his older classmates had told him he looked cool. Now his classmates are sixteen and making fun of him for being a baby, and he hates the glasses for screaming “little girl” when he’s doing everything he can to look older.

“Oh,” Illia says when he reads the head title. “Well.”

Newt’s fist is still clenched. It takes a lot not to take his uncle by the collar and shake him, or slam his hand on the wooden table, or just scream, scream, scream. “That’s all you have to say?” he asks instead. He’s always hated himself for sounding mean sometimes, but this time, he doesn’t regret it one single second. 

He can see shame creeping up Illia’s face. “I have a lot more to say,” he answers. He probably wouldn’t ground Newt if he slapped him, but Newt doesn’t anyway. If he did, he wouldn’t be better than any of the kids in his class that punch him in the nose and kick him in the knees because he’s too much of a child, too much of a smartass, too much of a girl.

“I’m sorry,” Illia says.

“I’m sure you are,” Newt spits, gritting his teeth. “You lied. I asked you about mom and Monica and you fucking  _ lied _ to my  _ face _ .”

Illia doesn’t call him out on the swear. “It was not my place to tell you that,” he says. “I think you should — you should speak to your father.”

Newt hasn’t ever been mad at his father, not really — nothing much more than the dumb tantrums children throw at their parents when they won’t buy them a toy or force them to eat their soup. He’s been mad at his mother —  _ not his mother _ — all his life, but in eleven years, he hasn’t really had any reason to be angry at his dad.

What a good time to start.

“You  _ lied _ ,” Newt repeats.

“It was never supposed to come up,” Illia says. “It was never supposed to be important — it would have hurt you — it  _ does  _ hurt you.” His voice is trembling. “I’m sorry — we raised you anyway, didn’t we? Monica didn’t. She left you, kid. And now she has an  _ idea _ and decides that she’s your mother and the whole country should know —”

“It’s not about that,” Newt says. “It’s not about her. I don’t  _ know _ her, but I know  _ you _ — it’s about you and dad.” Illia looks like he’s about to say something, but he doesn’t. “Of course she wasn’t going to say anything — she  _ left _ . But you? You said it — you raised me. You have no fucking excuse.”

Illia doesn’t move for a moment. Birds are singing outside.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Illia says then. “I really am. I — you really should talk to your father.”

They sit in silence until Newt’s parents come back from the dinner party they were invited to, three hours later. 

_

Newt’s mother —  _ not _ his mother — Elizabeth grabs the paper. She reads it with a frown on her face, her mouth a thin line as her eyes move across the words.

And then she says, “this is a fucking disaster.”

Newt’s dad frowns, too. It looks less angry on him, more tired. “Elizabeth, don’t sart —”

“Don’t you  _ Elizabeth _ me,” she snaps back. “Don’t you dare. Not now. You don’t have the fucking right. I’ll start whatever the fuck I want.” Elizabeth gets her cigarette pack from the pocket of her fur coat and lights one. “This is on you. You did this. You just had to do it, didn’t you. You just had to fuck her and give her a daughter she didn’t want, and now she’s out there,  _ humiliating _ me —” 

It should hurt. It really should.

“The kid is there,” Illia reminds.

“The kid can solve equations and win prizes twice above what her level should be,” Elizabeth spits. “You two always insist on treating her like an adult? Fine.” She turns her gaze to Newt, cold. She doesn’t look at him often, but when she does, it’s always like this.

“Your mother left like the irresponsible bitch she is because she didn’t care about you, and neither do I,” Elizabeth said. “You’re just the result of two very fucking stupid people who couldn’t think for two seconds before doing it without a condom even though both were married and handled the consequences very badly after. I never fucking wanted this. I didn’t chose to be stuck with your prick father, or  _ you _ .” She takes a nervous drag on her cigarette. Her fingers are trembling, her mouth twitching. This is a lot, even for her. “This is  _ adult _ , kid. You think you can handle it?”

“Elizabeth, for God’s sake!”

Newt’s heart thumps, thumps, thumps in his ears. His father and Elizabeth are yelling at each other now. Some glass breaks on the floor at some point — Newt barely hears it.

It should hurt. It really should.

And it does.

It really does.

_

He doesn’t speak to his father for sixteen days.

_

On the second day, Uncle Illia tells Newt his mother —  _ not _ his mother — is going to move out during the week. She’s asked for divorce, he says.

It’s no surprise that she didn’t bother to tell Newt.

_

On the fifth day - it’s Saturday - Newt is woken up by loud noises in the stairs. When he gets out of his room, he sees Elizabeth, in her fur coat, a big suitcase standing next to her and two men in work clothes carrying boxes around.

Newt doesn’t move, doesn’t say a thing until she notices him.

“Ah,” she says. “You’re awake.”

“Uncle Illia told me you were leaving,” Newt says as he walks down the stairs to get to her level.

“Well,” she says. “I am.” Her face barely moves as she speaks. Some of her blonde hair is falling in wavy strands around her face, the rest held back in an oddly sophisticated way.

“So,” Newt says, “I won’t see you again?”

Elizabeth sighs. “Probably not.”

Newt has always been happiest when she was out of the house. He’s not supposed to care.

“Bye, then,” he says.

One of the men crosses Elizabeth’s way, asks her if she’ll be ready soon, to which she nods. She takes her big suitcase in her hand, gives Newt a last look.

She leaves.

_

On the fifth day, it’s Saturday. 

Newt loves Saturdays. Saturdays are for watching X-Files in the morning and playing Pokémon games and working on new incredible projects with Uncle Illia. Saturdays are for going fishing and playing the piano and staying at home, safe, where nobody can make fun of him, because nobody here wants to.

And it’s not supposed to be about trying to find out what to do with the fact that his life has been a lie the whole time or having to watch yet another mother go because she never wanted him anyway.

But it is.

It’s Saturday.

Elizabeth just left.

Newt punches the wall of his room until he can’t anymore.

_

The doctor says he’s broken his wrist and two fingers. Newt’s dad looks at him with worried eyes as he sets the cast around Newt’s arm. Newt remembers the time Erik Hoffman broke his arm two years ago. He had fallen while skateboarding during the summer holidays. By the end of the first day of school, his cast was covered in doodles and little messages that his friends had made while Erik bragged about surviving this terrible fall.

Newt keeps his cast for three months. He tells nobody about how it happened, and the few times someone asks him how he’d done it, he pretends he’s fallen, too, like Erik Hoffman that summer. He draws little monsters on it himself. They’re ugly. 

_

  
  


On the sixteenth day, Newt’s dad comes to him and says: “I’m sorry.”

He’s been repeating it over and over again for two weeks now. Newt hasn’t said a word.

“I shouldn’t have kept this from you,” his dad says. “I should have — I guess I wanted things to be easier. And to hurt less. I should have known it wouldn’t work out. Even if you had never learned about it, it wasn’t — right. It wasn’t right.”

Newt is playing Pokemon on his GameBoy, but he’s stopped pressing the buttons. His Charizard is patiently waiting for instructions as it’s facing his rival Venusaur.

“It wasn’t right,” his father repeats. “Monica left you with me and I had just married Elizabeth — she couldn’t leave too, because it would have looked bad — I let it happen because it was my fault to begin with. I just — I messed up. So much. I shouldn’t have let them, or me, do that to you.”

Newt is still looking at the back of his Charizard.

“I would have understood,” Newt finally says after a minute — after sixteen days. “Not when I was a baby, but you could have told me now, and I would have been pissed at first, but I would have understood. I just — I would have liked to hear it from you.”

“I know,” his dad says. “I’m sorry. I thought about — telling you, and then I couldn’t, but it was unfair.” He pauses. “Everyone has their secrets, but you can’t build a family on a pile of lies. It was stupid of me to think it was possible.”

Newt presses A. Charizard uses Fire Blast.

“Okay,” Newt says. 

His dad sighs. “Thank you,” There is something like relief in his voice. “Do you want to — go to the movies or something? I’ve heard this Harry Potter thing was pretty neat. You might like it.”

Newt has heard that too. He knows that some people from his school, both younger and older than him, went to see it. No one invited him. He was going to go alone.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”

Later, when they’re at the movie theater, Newt’s dad buys him an extra snack with his popcorn, a pack of blue M&M’s, the one that sparkle on the tongue when you eat them.

He’s not forgiven, not yet. It takes more than a few apologies and chocolate candy to make up for eleven years of lies. 

And Newt is still mad, he is. Despite that, it feels good to spend time with his father again.

_

In all the years Newt spends alone at school, he finds two people that he might consider friends.

There’s this one guy from his class, Tom. Newt doesn’t really know if he can call him that — a friend — because they don’t even talk that much and seventeen year olds can sometimes be nice to fourteen year olds without it meaning that they want to be friends with them. But they’ve known each other for a year and Tom has been nicer to him than anyone else in this school, so it kind of counts. 

Tom’s got kind eyes and nice hair. He likes to study with Newt after class sometimes, asks him for actual help to understand his physics homework instead of just copying Newt’s answers, and he once told Newt he was one of the most interesting people he knew. It’s still one of the best compliments Newt has ever recieved.

The second friend — who might be an actual one — is called Sofie. They met because Newt’s father once invited friends of his over at the house, and the friends had a daughter that was the same age as Newt was. They had spent the entire afternoon playing Donkey Kong Country on Newt’s PlayStation. They had barely talked, but it had been enough. Newt had still been smiling long after Sofie and her parents were gone.

“So,” Sofie says as she stretches before they start another Need for Speed race. She’s lying on her stomach on the floor, a cushion under her chest to make it more comfortable. “Have you talked to that guy recently?”

“Which guy?” Newt says. He knows which guy, though. 

“The guy you like,” Sofie says. She takes a handful of potato chips, then a sip of the lemonade Illia made.

“I don’t like him,” Newt says a little bit too quick. “Not like that.”

“So you know the one I’m talking about when I say you like him, huh,” Sofie says. “Interesting.”

“Don’t play smart,” Newt says. “It’s not like there are that many guys I talk to. And I like him, but I don’t  _ like _ like him. He’s cool, that’s all. And also three years older than I am.  _ Even if _ I liked him, he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me anyway — I must look four to him.”

“No, you must look fourteen,” Sofie says. “I won,” she says then, and Newt had noticed, thank you very much. She puts her controller down on the floor, sits up, and finishes her lemonade in one go. Newt is still looking at the screen, because he doesn’t know if his cheeks are red but his face is hot and he doesn’t want Sofie to find out before he does. “Also, you like him. You’re just afraid he doesn’t like you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Newt says. “I just  _ know _ it. No one wants to kiss a girl with braces and acne and not the shadow of a boob on her chest.”

Sofie shrugs. “I had those when I was twelve, and I kissed three guys during that summer,” she says. “So, you like him.”

Newt is most definitely red now. “Yeah, fine, I like him,” he says. “What difference does it make?”

“You can’t know until you’ve told him,” Sofie says.

“I’m moving to the United States,” Newt blurts out.

He still isn’t looking at her, but he can see her eyes widening in the corner of his eye. “What?” Sofie says.

“I applied for a scholarship for MIT,” Newt says, looking down. “I got the confirmation yesterday. I got approved.”

“That’s —” Sofie begins, then coughs and starts again. “That’s great. Wow. Jesus, it’s a big deal! Why didn’t you say anything before? Congrats, dude. It’s amazing.” She pats him in the back, grabs his shoulder in a friendly embrace. Newt’s face is hot, hot,  _ hot _ , and he doesn’t know where to put his hands. “I knew you were a genius,” Sofie says, “but wow,  _ university _ .”

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Newt says. His voice feels raw. “I’m like, the second youngest student there ever, apparently. The first youngest was ten at the time she was taken, so I gotta work on my game.”

“You’ve been accepted in one of the best universities there is at the age of fucking fourteen,” Sofie says. “I think your game’s pretty neat already.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Newt says. He picks up his glass of lemonade from the floor, drinks it all at once. “I just — I don’t wanna be just..  _ good _ , you know? I wanna be the best. Like, I wanna be the one to make cloning a real thing, to help win an alien war.”

“Dude,” Sofie says, laughing. “You can’t become the best scientist in the world just because you like anime.”

Newt smiles. “Watch me, bitch.”

_

That night, long after Sofie is gone and Newt, his dad and Illia have had dinner, Newt lays in bed thinking about Tom. He closes his eyes and sees Tom’s soft hair, his soft light brown eyes, remembers the unidentifiable but sweet smell of his shampoo that Newt noticed the one time they went to the movies together. Was it a date? Maybe Sofie was right, maybe there could have been something if Newt had made a move, maybe there could be something if he did now. He’s leaving, and there’s no point, but still, Newt wishes he had the guts to try. He should have, that time at the movies. He should have tried to reach for his hand, and maybe Tom would have held Newt’s, maybe they could have kissed — 

It would never, never happen.

What was Sofie hoping to get out of this conversation anyway? Tom and Newt could never have been a thing. Newt knows that. Sofie knows that. Was she just willing to make fun of him for even fantasizing about something with Tom, for having a crush on a boy he could never have? Who does she think she is? 

Newt thinks about Sofie swimming by the pool during summer, wet hair and wet swimming suit and wet skin, her breasts slightly showing through the fabric. They’re the same age, and yet Sofie looks at least two or three years older than Newt —  _ she _ could get seventeen year old boys. Boys like Tom. Newt thinks about some of the rare genuine smiles Sofie gave away, that same afternoon at the pool. She was drinking lemonade, saying something stupid about the pattern of Newt’s bikini. Newt, bizarrely, inexplicably, had wanted to eat that smile up.

He still does, sometimes.

He buries his head under his pillow and thinks about science fests from when he was a kid and neurobiology theories and Illia’s electronic circuits. Brown eyes and wet swimsuits keep flashing in his head.

Fuck Sofie, Newt thinks.

_

Newt really becomes  _ Newt _ on the first day of college. He picks that name because his dad used to call him  _ little Newton _ when he was a kid and he’s always liked the ring of it better than his real name. He introduces himself as Newt to every person he meets — people who actually want to talk to him, how miraculous is that? — and even asks the teachers to use this name rather than the one on the papers. He doesn’t really ask himself why it’s important to him that everyone knows him under that new name. Because it’s a new beginning? Maybe because he doesn’t want anything to do with his old life. Except that isn’t true. He doesn’t miss his former school and having no friends, but he does miss movie nights with his dad and Illia’s food and playing PlayStation with Sofie.

It isn’t true, so why is the name important?

He doesn’t really ask himself that question.

_

He meets his best friend at a student party. He doesn’t know she is going to be his best friend then, of course. He just knows that he accidentally bumped into that chick that’s in his class. Not that he remembers everyone from his class, because they’re a  _ lot _ , but she’s pretty recognizable — neon green strands in her black hair, a dragon tattoo on her hand and the coolest combat boots Newt has ever seen. She’s pretty hard to miss.

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry,” she says, horrified at Newt’s beer stained shirt. Her accent sounds British, but Newt’s knowledge of English isn’t precise enough to really know. “I’m so, so sorry —”

“No, it’s me,” Newt replies, and it really is, because he wasn’t looking in the right direction while walking through a crowd of boozed-up students and that’s pretty much suicide. “Sorry.”

“No, no,” the girl says. “Shit, your whole shirt is wet.” A good part of it is, indeed, and Newt feels cold and moist all over his chest and stomach, fabric sticking to his body.

“It’s nothing,” he shrugs. It really is nothing. Newt doesn’t really like this t-shirt anyway. “I’m just gonna change in my room — no big deal.”

“Which dorm are you in?”

“71,” Newt answers. “Next to the financial aids service.”

“Just come to my room,” the girl says, taking Newt’s hand and already dragging him through dancing and drinking students. “It’s literally next door. I don’t wanna be responsible if you get lost in the dark.”

“It’s only a ten minutes walk,” Newt protests, but the girl doesn’t listen — or doesn’t hear, which wouldn’t be surprising what with all that noise around.

The girl’s room really is next door, so much so that you can still hear the music and the sound of hundreds of voices talking on top of each other. When she opens the door, it’s unlocked. There’s a guy sitting on one of the beds, with a buzzcut and dark, swirling tattoos on his bare arms, who mutters a vague  _ hi _ at Newt before going back to typing on his laptop.

The girl runs to her desk to put down her beer, then to the cupboard, looking for some piece of clothing. Newt looks around the room — it’s much cooler than his, although it’s build the exact same way, except for the fact that this one has two beds and he’s alone in his. The walls are covered with posters of bands and singers Newt has never heard of. The only exceptions are The Cure, The Misfits, David Bowie, and, weirdly, Britney Spears.

“Here you go,” the girl says, handing Newt a plain black tee. “Put it on. I won’t look, neither will Bren.” She turns around to prove her point. The guy, Bren, doesn’t, and Newt’s not sure he’s even heard what the girl was saying due to his headphones, but his eyes are still on his laptop screen. He changes quickly, rapidly covering his skin and his shitty grey sports bra with the girl’s tee. It’s warm, smells like fresh laundry — something with mint ? — and is, thankfully, very large. 

“I’m done,” Newt says. The girl turns back to him. “Thank you,” Newt says.

The girl picks her beer up from the desk and takes a gulp from the bottle, then reaches for her pocket and retrieves a pack of smokes and a lighter. She lights a cigarette, and then, without a word exchanged, throws the pack to the guy on the bed — Bren — who quietly thanks her before reaching for his own lighter on the nightstand and doing the same. The girl opens the window above the desk, which makes the music and noise even more clear, and her and Bren, who’s gotten up from the bed now, both get as close as possible to the exterior to smoke.

“Isn’t it a problem to live this close to the gym?” Newt says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “I mean — they’re always throwing parties there. It must be this noisy all the time.”

The girl shrugs. “You get used to it,” she says. “This guy here barely sleeps anyway,” she says, pointing at Bren, who doesn’t say anything to correct her. “I’m Ji-Min, by the way,” the girl says. “This is my brother.”

“Bren,” the guy says.

“I don’t think I’m going back to the gym, in the end,” Ji-Min says. “That party was kind of lame and I was already too tired to see that many people to begin with.” She alternates between sipping from her beer bottle and dragging on her cigarette. Watching them smoking by the window, Newt is suddenly aware he’s still standing straight right before the door.

“Yeah, I’m probably gonna head back to my dorm too,” Newt says. “I wasn’t having too much fun either.” It’s hard to have fun when you’re too young and too sober in a room of older people all on their way to getting wasted.

“Wanna hang out here?” Ji-Min says. “The night’s still very young, and we have beers in the fridge. Not that I’ll serve any to a fourteen year old.”

Being younger than everyone is less annoying here than it was in all of the schools he’s been to in Berlin, but for specific things like this one, it still sucks. “How do you know I’m fourteen?” he says.

Ji-Min smiles. “Dude,” she says. “You might be smart for your age, but you don’t look much older.” Bren smiles at that, too. “Besides,” Ji-Min continues, “you’re kind of a star around here. Everybody on campus knows who you are.”

That is the cool part about being younger than everyone. Illia would say — has said, actually, more than once — that Newt’s got to be careful, because if he lets compliments and admiration and fame overwhelm him, there will be nothing left of who he is now, and he won’t like the person he’ll become. Newt knows he’s right, because Illia also told him that his not-mom Elizabeth used to be a very lovely lady before becoming the second best opera singer in Germany. Although, in that situation, Newt suspects it might be less because of the fame and more due to the rivalry with a woman her husband had slept with. Plus, plenty of people are famous and still nice. Leo DiCaprio seems nice. There’s nothing wrong in liking being liked. Newt isn’t even famous yet.

“Come on,” Ji-Min says. “You can sit on my bed if you want. I must have something to drink for you.”

Newt meets his best friend at a student party. He doesn’t know she is going to be his best friend then, but he already wishes she was.

_

When Newt wakes up in his own room, he’s late for his anatomy class. He tries to get inside the auditorium as quietly as possible, except the course has been going on for an entire hour, everyone’s looking at him and the teacher only lets it be because it’s Newt and not just any other student. Newt knows it. He takes a seat as far as he can from anyone. His cheeks are red and his hair is messy, even though he tried holding it into a ponytail, and he’s still wearing Ji-Min’s shirt from yesterday night under his hoodie. He probably reeks of sweat and cold tobacco from Ji-Min’s and Bren’s cigarettes.

After he’s gotten his notebook and his pen out of his backpack, he takes a look around himself. It’s a big auditorium, so it takes him a little bit of time, but Ji-Min’s partly neon green hair is still easy to spot in a crowd, and when he sees it, Ji-Min is smiling and waving at him.

He smiles back before getting to work.

_

Newt always liked  _ Newt _ better than the name that was given to him, and it isn’t exactly true that he hasn’t ever asked himself why. The truth is, he has, but the possible answers to the  _ why _ s made no sense to him, so he tried to forget about it. Lock the question up in a safe, lose the key. Plus, a ton of people go by nicknames, or even change their name for a better one, so there’s nothing weird with that.

The truth is, Newt has looked at guys and thought that he wanted to be them, vividly, before trying very hard to think about every hot girl he knew and think the same. He has thanked the universe or genetics of whatever for not giving him bigger boobs than that because at least, when they’re this small, he can hide them under his sweaters and pretend he doesn’t have any. He still wishes he _ really _ didn’t have any. He has looked at himself in the mirror and wished there was less here, more there.

He’s asked himself several  _ why _ s for that too. He doesn’t know the answers, but he  _ does _ .

Newt is fifteen when he takes a pair of paper scissors from his drawer and cuts his own hair in his dorm room. It gets everywhere, and months later, he still find bits of it in unlikely places.

_

“Jesus, what happened to you?” Ji-Min says when she sees Newt the day after.

Newt shrugs, trying to hide his shame. The haircut is bad, a mess, and it doesn’t make him look any more like a guy. “I wanted a change,” he says, instead of  _ I wanted to disappear _ .

Ji-Min runs her hand through Newt’s hair. Her touch is soft. She has bright pink hair now, shorter than when they first met. “You could have asked,” she says. “It’s not an easy task, doing that yourself.”

After class, she walks him to his room and makes him sit on a chair for fifteen minutes while she tries to fix the mess he’s made, then turns the chair towards the mirror.

“You look like young Robert Smith,” she says. “Congrats, you’re hot.”

Newt laughs.

Then, he cries.

_

Newt has his first kiss after a Paramore concert. He’s seventeen, still has remnants of acne on his cheeks and he’s wearing the old, ugly glasses he always takes to concert so he doesn’t damage the others. But apparently, he’s still attractive enough for a pretty girl to notice him and take him to the bar’s bathroom. The others are having drinks just a door away, and it’s crazy, because Newt would have thought his first kiss would be lamer than that. He remembers Sofie, years ago, telling him that first kisses were overrated, that hers had felt like nothing but vaguely gross because the guy didn’t know where to put his tongue.

And Sofie must just have been really unlucky, because this is everything but gross. The girl is taller than him by almost a head, has long, curly dark hair and bites Newt’s lip every now and then. For a couple of minutes, which is a considerable amount of time, Newt is a little bit in love with her, even though he isn’t.   
They make out for as long as they think it's reasonable before they remember they're not supposed to spend an hour in the bathroom while the others are waiting in the bar, or they're gonna suspect something. The girl — Newt doesn’t even know her name — still takes Newt in for a last kiss, licking into his mouth and grabbing his ass, and it should be criminal to do that to someone and then just leave the bathroom without saying anything. Newt gets out first, more turned on that he's ever been and probably very visibly flushed, but no one says anything, thank God. Ji-Min either hasn’t noticed or decided to leave it alone, but Newt tells her anyway.

“Why are you embarrassed?” Ji-Min says with a smirk after taking a gulp of beer. Newt must be bright red.

“Because I’m  _ seventeen _ ,” Newt says, “and it was my  _ first kiss _ .”

Ji-Min laughs. “So what? Most people I know did it after that, actually. Besides, I think having a PhD at seventeen makes up for not having kissed anyone in terms of cool, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

“A PhD isn’t gonna get me laid,” Newt mumbles.

“Oh, boy,” Ji-Min says. “You know nothing, do you?”

_

Sometimes, Newt spends three days in a row in Ji-Min and Bren’s room, staying up late and trying to sleep in Ji-Min’s little one person bed then getting up for class and going together. Newt sometimes gets scared that it might bother her, but she’s the one offering him to stay every time. Sometimes they watch stupid shows that Ji-Min downloads on her small laptop, and sometimes they just lie in bed, talking about things. And Newt sometimes gets scared that might annoy her, too, because he’s younger than her and yes, he might be smart, but he’s still a kid. Cool, twenty-year old people don’t want to hang out with kids.

But sometimes, Ji-Min says things, and it all feels alright. “You’re the best of all of us, you know that?” she says. “You truly are. You’re a good person. I’m glad we’re friends, you know that, right? If you want me to, I will keep you forever.”

And it’s alright.

_

  
  


Because he manages to have excellent grades and to go faster than anyone else, Newt allows himself three reasons not to go to class: having a family emergency, being extremely sick, or having period cramps too painful to bear. The first thing hasn’t happened since he’s been here, thankfully, and he’s only been too ill to go to class once, but the period thing is, sadly, very fucking difficult to avoid, and sometimes, when it’s more unbearable than usual, he spends the first day in bed with something warm pressed against his stomach, waiting for the painkillers to kick in.

It’s one of those times. Newt is wrapped up in three different blankets, but despite that and the water bottle he filled with hot water because he still hasn’t bought a proper heating pad, his feet are still freezing and his whole body feels like it’s shaking. Not just because he’s weak at the moment, but also because it’s the end of February and Massachusetts is fucking  _ cold _ . He also might have cried a little bit earlier, might still be on the verge of tears, but he manages to make it fade into the background with dumb horror movies Ji-Min put on a USB key for him the other day.

Ji-Min usually calls him to check if everything is alright, when he doesn’t go to class, but that’s when she goes herself, and Newt knows she’s in town to visit a friend of hers today. It’s actually kind of rare to see her going to her classes, these days, but Newt doesn’t have it in him to ask her why, let alone to push her to go. He would have hated that, if it was him.

His mobile buzzes once — a text — at the other end of the room, and it takes him a  _ lot _ to actually get up to get it. Maybe Bren told Ji-Min Newt wasn’t here today.

He didn’t expect the text to actually be from Bren himself. 

_ hey man, u ok? _

Newt sits back, then gives up and just lies down on his bed again, curling around his warm plastic bottle. 

_ yeah fine dont worry im just not feeling super good _

It’s not that he’s surprised that Bren cares about him — or, yeah, well, he still has trouble believing that  _ anyone _ besides his father and Illia cares about him, but he knows, or hopes, that Bren does. It’s just that he’s always had a more discreet way of caring. Where Ji-Min talks her feelings out and likes to hug the people she cares about — although she always asks if the person is okay with it, and Newt loves her for those kinds of things too — Bren is more the type to give out rare soft smiles and pats on the heads and advice on life. It’s still weird when he directly asks if everything is alright, even if it’s not that uncommon that he does.

His phone buzzes again.

_ u have everything u need? i can drop by ur room if u need food or something _

And again, Bren knows him, and Bren cares, and Bren usually shows it by bringing Newt leftovers from what he cooked for Ji-Min and himself, because he  _ knows _ Newt doesn’t always remember to eat when he’s studying. So this shouldn’t be surprising at all, and maybe it’s just that Newt still has trouble believing that anyone cares, maybe it’s that, and maybe he’s about to cry again right now, who knows.

_ nah don’t bother its like a forever long walk and its cold. its ok ill get out later for groceries _

Buzz again.

_ be there in 30 _

Newt puts his phone down.

Thirty minutes later, Bren is here. Newt tries to look as little miserable as possible, which is hard considering the fact he hasn’t showered since yesterday. He also hasn’t washed his hair for a week and his whole face probably looks as greasy as it feels, but even though Bren has already seen him like this and worse, he doesn’t want to look that terrible over  _ periods _ , even if it’s normal, he knows, even if other girls get it bad too.

Bren doesn’t say anything about Newt looking like he just spent three days in a trashcan, bless him. He just quietly says hi, tells Newt to sit back when he sees he can barely stand up without whimpering, and gets to the other end of the room to put down the little plastic bag he was holding. “I bought you that Denny’s salted caramel pancake mix you like with some eggs,” he says as he gets the items out of the bag one by one, “some milk, tomato sauce, cheese and some veggies. You should be able to survive the week.”

“How much do I owe you?” Newt asks.

“You’ll buy me drinks next time we go out,” Bren says, taking his leather jacket off, then turning around to lean over the worktop and look at Newt. Bren’s hair has been freshly buzzed, what’s left of it a faint shadow over his skull. 

“Bren —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bren says. “How are you feeling?”

Newt doesn’t want to lie down again, because that would be pathetic, so instead he pushes himself against the wall, arranging a pillow behind his back for comfort, and bringing his thighs close to his stomach so he can stick his warm bottle against his belly. It’s not so warm anymore, barely helps, and the ibuprofen sill isn’t doing anything either. 

“I’m fine,” Newt says. Bren doesn’t say anything, because it’s not his type, but his gaze on Newt says  _ bullshit _ so loud Newt feels obligated to talk. “I’m just — it’s just, you know. Girl things.” What a stupid fucking thing to say.

“Ah, shit,” Bren says. “Been there.”

“Because of Jim?” Newt asks. He never noticed Ji-Min had it particularly bad too.

“No, she’s actually fine,” Bren replies. “I mean me.”

Newt doesn’t answer right away. He looks at Bren, confused. “You?”

“Yeah, I used to have those,” he says. “Because I’m — y’know. Trans.”

And it takes a second or two before things in Newt’s brain click — so much for a gifted kid. “Oh.”  _ Oh _ . “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of the point,” Bren shrugs. “I don’t go around telling everyone. Can I open the window to have a cig or are you too cold?” Newt shakes his head, and Brendon moves by the desk where the window is, opens it, and sits. He gets his lighter and his pack from the pocket of his leather jacket, then leaves it to rest on Newt’s chair and lights a cigarette. “That’s why I’m in the same room as Jim, by the way,” Bren adds. “They wouldn’t have let me if I had a dick, because she was adopted and we’re not blood relatives, so I guess they would still be afraid we could fuck. But my ID still says that I’m a woman, so, here I am.”

“That’s gross,” Newt says. “They’re gross.”

“Yeah, that’s about the nicest thing about it. The rest of it kind of sucks.” He takes a drag on his smoke. “The people being ignorant thing, I mean,” he continues. “Not being trans.”

“Of course,” Newt replies. He’s starting to have a little bit of trouble functioning, and it’s not because of what Bren said, what Bren  _ is _ — it’s because of what’s going on in his own head. His period is still killing him, too, and it doesn’t help. “Can I ask you something?”

“‘f course.”

“Tell me if I’m off limits,” Newt says. Bren nods. “When did you know?”

Bren blows some smoke, doing his best to get it outside the room and half failing. “Not right away,” he starts. “I lived sixteen years before even thinking about it. I think I was comfortable being a girl as a kid, because I didn’t question it, then it became harder. But yeah, sixteen. Got on hormones about two years after that. Besides the papers problem and some other shit, I’ve never been better.”

If Newt cries, he can blame it on his period. He is not crying, though, but he might. “Why did you tell me?” Newt says. “I mean — I won’t tell anyone, of course, and I guess you know that, but — why did you tell me?”

Bren smiles. “I don’t know,” he says. “Why did I?”

_

They’re lying on Ji-Min’s bed with their legs up against the wall, both playing Pokémon on their respective Nintendo DSs. Bren is somewhere outside, either at the gym, or, as Ji-Min suspects, at his maybe secret boyfriend’s room.

Newt puts down his DS on his chest, unable to focus, and starts counting the cracks on the ceiling.

_ One, two, three _ —

He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about that conversation with Bren, and it’s eating him alive. If he doesn’t have trouble seeing Bren the same way as before he told him, why is it so hard to see himself as —

_ Four, five _ —

And if Bren has managed to live his life like that, to let himself be  _ him _ , maybe Newt could too, so why can’t he? Why can’t he even touch that thought without crying? He’s been crying a whole lot these last few nights. He’s been imagining what his life would be if he could just lean in and touch it, but he can’t —

_ Six, seven, eight, nine  _ —

But he has to try, doesn’t he? He has to try to let go. He has to try —

_ Ten, eleven  _ —

“Jim,” he says.

“Hm?”

_ Breathe in. Breathe out. You can do it _ . “I think I’m a boy,” he says.

There’s a short silence.

Then Ji-Min gets herself up on one elbow, putting her legs back down on the mattress. She’s looking at Newt, and when he dares look back, her eyes are kind. She’s smiling. “Ok,” she says. 

And Newt cries.

_

Newt gets on testosterone on the day he turns eighteen. It’s also the day he plays his first concert.

The band hasn’t even been a thing for more than three weeks and Newt, Charlie and Hannah registered for that open mic thing five minutes ago with little to no rehearsal — they kind of tried out two or three songs last week, but that barely even  _ counts _ , and Newt is going to  _ die _ .

“You’re going to be great,” Ji-Min tells him as she’s fixing — or messing up even more ? — his newly blue hair. She dyed it yesterday, “so you turning eighteen will be something that you’ll remember forever”, as she said. It still feels odd everytime a strand gets in front of his eyes, blue where it used to be brown, but it’s the kind of odd he has always looked for. 

“I’m gonna fuck up,” he says.

“You’re not,” Ji-Min immediately counters. “You already look like a rockstar,” she adds, pointing at his Sex Pistols tee and his new Dr. Martens. 

The thing is, Newt is not a rock star, not even a real singer, but he doesn’t fuck up, or not exactly. The show is a mess, obviously, but there’s nobody sober or even just serious enough to care. Everyone sings along to their cover of Green Day’s  _ Holiday _ , and in that moment, Newt is pretty sure he’s the most alive he’s ever been.

"I'm buying you a drink," Ji-Min immediately says when Newt, Charlie and Hannah join her at the bar. "We're celebrating today."

She isn't talking about the concert, even though she is also talking about the concert. There are more important things going on today, and the most important one isn't Newt's birthday.

"Buy me an  _ actual _ drink, then," Newt replies. "Fucking United-States and their stupidly high age restriction. Not even letting an eighteen years old have a beer. Fascists."

"Yeah, you tell me that," Ji-Min laughs, raising her hand and waving down a barman. "I had just turned eighteen when we left England. A new found liberty and I had to give it up immediately. Ridiculous."

Ji-Min gets them a beer each.

"So," she says. "To Acid Rats, or whatever that band is called." Their glasses clink. "To you being eighteen," she adds. She brings her drink to her lips. "To you being you.”

_

“Jesus, did nobody teach you how to dress properly?” Monica asks, tightening Newt’s tie as they’re about to enter the restaurant. “You’re a mess.”

The answer is no, nobody taught him, because he left his home at fourteen and because looking  _ chic _ never was a preoccupation before that — not that it really is now. Monica could have been the one teaching him, if she had wanted to. But she hadn’t.

“You could have done something with your hair, at least,” she says, pulling out a pocket mirror from her coat and touching up her lipstick. “I can’t even blame you,” she sighs then. “It’s not like you had a proper education as a man. You never learned to dress like one.”

“I never dressed like a woman either,” Newt finally says as they enter the restaurant.

“You had terrible role models.” She’s on the verge of rudeness, carefully hovering between polite and savage, and it’s almost amazing that she can find the nerve to talk about role models when she didn’t even try to be one, even for a second, when Newt needed it. “I never liked Elizabeth’s dresses,” Monica says. “They were of poor taste.” She stops talking as a waiter shows them the table they’ve reserved, taking their coats away with her as she leaves again to get the menus. They both sit down at a small table standing under a too big contemporary painting of white lines on a cream background. 

“As for the  _ men _ side of things,” Monica continues, “you would have expected a homo to know about fashion, but Illia was a  _ disaster _ — have I told you that the first time I met him, I thought he was a homeless fisherman?”

“No, you haven’t,” Newt says.

“It’s probably their fault you ended up like that.”

Newt’s neck hair stands up. “I don’t know what you’re implying,” he starts, voice as cold as he can make it, “but if it’s what I think it is, I’m not gonna stop myself from telling you to go to hell.”

If Monica doesn’t get offended at Newt talking to her like that, it’s because she knows Newt would leave and never call again if she did. “Oh, come on,” she protests. “I wasn’t talking about that. You have to stop believing everything everyone tells you is about you being a trans. I meant the way you  _ dress _ .”

“Great, glad you’re not attacking my identity, now can we please talk about something else?”

“Alright, alright.” The waitress from before comes back with the wine card as well as the menu. Monica thanks her promptly, then puts her expensive reading glasses on. “It’s been a while,” she tells Newt, her eyes on the menu.

And it’s funny, because it had been even longer before the first time she ever called him, before she decided to take a first step towards the child she’d abandoned. It had been “a while” that lasted eleven years, and then two more because Newt had only picked up the phone to tell her to go fuck herself the first time. “Yeah,” Newt says. “Good seeing you.”

It’s a lie, and it’s a disaster.

She closes the menu rather fast. It’s probably not her first time coming here, and she usually sticks to the same dish when she finds one she really loves. Newt settles for a pumpkin steak with cranberry sauce and fresh veggies — they actually do have some decent vegetarian, even vegan meals here, which is always a nice surprise.

They share an uncomfortable silence until the waitress comes back to take their orders and serves them some wine.

“So,” Monica starts then. “How have you been?” The faint lights make her black hair and red lipstick pop against her golden skin. 

Newt takes a gulp of wine as gracefully as he can. “Oh, you know,” he replies. “The usual. School and stuff.”

“I’m so proud of you,” Monica says. She has that voice she always uses when she realizes she screwed up and tries to make up for it. “Look at you,” she continues. “Six doctorates, and a great teacher.”

“Yeah,” Newt says. “Students like me.”

“It’s great that you’re teaching,” Monica nods. “It’s honorable work. You’ve grown into a great wo— man. A great  _ man _ .”

And it’s funny, because it’s not exactly what she thought the first time she saw him. To her defense, Newt had been looking for a fight — he had made the worst choices possible, picking up his wrecked Jurassic Park t-shirt and not bothering to fix his cracked black nail polish. He was an angry kid who wanted to piss his mother off. He had his reasons. It hasn’t really changed that much, to be fair.

“How are your friends?” Monica asks. “Ji-Min and Bren. Is Ji-Min doing alright with her— new thing?”

“She’s fine,” Newt replies. “She got her license this summer and she’s gonna start looking for a spot in tattoo salons.” He stops himself before saying he’s going to ask Ji-Min for a big piece on his arms someday. He’s not looking for a fight  _ that _ much, and Monica already made a face when Newt told her his best friend stopped her studies to pursue a tattoo artist career. “Bren studies a lot.”

“Mh,” Monica says. “Good for them, good for them.”

The waiter brings them three  _ verrines _ each as appetizers. Newt only eats one of them, because the others have fish and meat in them.

He vaguely hears Monica ask about whether the band he’s in is still a thing, vaguely answers that no, it isn’t. Monica says it’s a shame, that she would have loved to hear him play and sing, that she could have learned to like punk rock. Newt doesn’t really listen to her anymore after that.

And it’s funny, because Monica isn’t boring. She isn’t, really — she’s a pretty fascinating woman. She sings like no one else in Germany, paints fairly well as a hobby, and has a surprisingly vast knowledge of French movies. Newt would have loved to have her as his mother, if she had wanted to then. 

And it’s funny — Newt would really have loved that, would have loved her. But she didn’t wanted, and it never happened.

_

Newt is twenty-three when the war begins.

He’s ordering a coffee at the Starbucks down his street when he checks his phone for the first time that day. The first thing he sees before he can even wonder about what music he should chose to play in his earbuds is the five texts and six missed calls from Ji-Min. He also has two calls from his dad, one from Bren and one from Fiona, the one other young teacher he hangs out with most of the time these days, but he calls Ji-Min before anyone else, not even opening her messages.

“Where are you?” She asks, panic in her voice. “Are you alright?”

“Uh, on my way to school for some paperwork,” Newt replies. “Why?”

She sighs. “Good,” she says. “Good, glad to hear that. You could have answered, with all that’s happening,” she snaps then. “I was scared to fucking death — and Bren told me you hadn’t answered him either, and I thought maybe you were in California for some conference thing or I don’t know and I thought you  _ died _ —”

“Jim,” Newt says, “Jim. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ji-Min doesn’t speak right away. “Jeez,” she lets out then. “You haven’t seen?”

“No,” Newt replies. “No, I haven’t seen.”

“Newt,” she says. “A giant monster rose from the Pacific this morning. It’s been destroying San Francisco for the last two hours.”

Newt’s breath stops.

“Are you joking?”

Except he’s getting out of the Starbucks now, latte in hand, and he sees dozens of people gathered in front of a pub, watching the TV from the outside with their hands over their mouths, whispering  _ oh my god _ ,  _ what the fuck, what’s happening? _

And he sees it.

The thing is enormous — it steps on building as if they were lego houses, crushes people as if they were ants. It looks like fucking Godzilla, or dinosaurs, or space aliens, like anything that shouldn’t exist on this earth at this time, but it’s there. It looks like everything Newt has ever imagined, like everything he’s seen in mangas and animes and movies, but this time, it’s real.

Newt’s eyes stay locked on the screen as he answers calls of people asking if he’s alright, reassuring his father and Illia, then Monica. Yesterday, he was crossing some of the streets this monster is tearing through, climbing in a taxi like it was nothing, maybe one of the cars the thing is stepping on right now, the machines like sand grains under its giant feet.

As he stands in front of that pub for the next two hours, he can see the streets emptying, people going back to their homes, as nobody knows what to do. He goes back to his own flat then, suddenly remembering that he does own a TV, and turns it on as soon as it’s there. The coffee he’s still holding is intact, untouched, but cold. He sets it away and sits on his couch, nauseous. His skin is buzzing with fear but with something else, too, as he keeps watching the news. This is real. This is terrible but it’s  _ real _ and that, in itself, is incredible. It’s an entire new reality opening up an infinity of possibilities.

It takes six days for the beast to finally be taken down by the hundreds of tanks, troops and jets, six days of desperate attempts at stopping it and failing before it finally collapses, leaving a giant sized, monster shaped hole in Oakland. Newt’s barely slept for the last six days, probably nobody has — the world is quaking in terror, Newt is still shaking, and he’s —

He’s —

He’s alive.

_

  
  


Newt and Ji-Min catch the first public Jaeger test on a livestream at three in the morning. They’re in Newt’s little apartment, drunk on that new Kaiju Blue booze they’ve been selling everywhere these last months. It tastes like something toxic enough to kill someone even though it’s not made of actual Kaiju blood, obviously, and Newt isn’t sure about the ethics of naming a product after this, but they keep drinking it anyway, even though it’s kind of disgusting.

When the Jaeger lands on the floor, its gigantic legs the size of small buildings, Newt screams. Ji-Min, even though she tells him to shut up at first (because  _ it’s fucking three in the morning _ ) ends up shouting the beginning of the Evangelion opening, Newt following her as she pours some more of that terrifyingly phosphorescent thing in their glasses. 

“You know what?” Newt says as the livestream shows the Jaeger smashing into some fake monsters in a desert land in Japan. “I think I found what I want you to ink on me. I think I want a Kaiju tattoo.”

As they watch the machine fighting other machines, Newt studies the fake opponent’s moves. It won’t be the same with an actual Kaiju because they’re bigger, stronger, with new skills and specificities everytime. Newt has studied every piece of information he’s found about each and every Kaiju before writing most of the papers you can find about them. He’s the number one expert, the best that ever was and that ever will be.

He knows it won’t be the same with an actual Kaiju, but he knows they can win the war. He will be the one making sure they do.

“You want a global menace tattooed on your arm?” Ji-Min asks, laughing and not really surprised, not really wondering if Newt is joking of not. She’s been getting a bunch of new tattoos herself, recently — a crow on the side of her neck, a couple of runes on her fingers. They go well with the snakes on her arms. Newt can only wish he will look half as badass as her one day — he remembers her, the first time they met, green strands in her hair and combat boots at her feet. Most of her hair is shaved in a purple and pink mohawk now, and they’ve changed as their friendship grew, but sometimes, when Newt looks at her, he still sees a girl too cool to talk to him.

“Yeah,” Newt simply replies. “Yeah.”

“Of course you fuckin’ do,” Ji-Min says, sipping on her glass.

The bottom left corner of the TV focuses on the faces of the scientists that are part of the Jaeger project as the voice-over describes the scene. “ _ It’s with amazement and hope that the public now witnesses the showcase of the Mark-1 Jaeger, _ ” the commenter says. “ _ More than a success for the machine or for its creators, it’s a success for mankind. If you’re watching the broadcast from home, it’s safe to say that you’re watching one of the most important moments in human history.” _

“Amen,” Ji-Min says. She’s put her glass down and reached for her bag, rolling a joint on her lap.

“ _ Today is the day that us, humans, can finally take back our rights _ ,” the commenter continues.  _ “Today, mankind created something bigger than itself, in order to wage the wars we aren’t be able to fight for ourselves.”  _

Ji-Min hands Newt the joint, letting him light it up. Newt fumbles for a lighter while trying not to miss what’s happening on screen. “Here,” Ji-Min says, handing him hers. Newt thanks her, lights the joint, and keeps watching as he takes a drag.

The camera switches from the Jaeger to the team of scientists in their VIP seats. " _ All of this wouldn't have been possible without Caitlin Lightcap and the Drift concept that she developed, and, of course, without the precursors of the Jaeger Program, also here today. _ " Lightcap is smiling, calm face and perfect brushing. The camera switches again. " _ Here, we can see Jasper Schoenfield, who, as you probably know, first proposed the idea for the Jaeger Program, _ " the commenter goes on. " _ At his side, Lars Gottlieb, who participated in its development, and his son, Hermann Gottlieb, who wrote the code for Brawler Yukon at only twenty-five years old. _ " On screen, Lars Gottlieb is squeezing his son's shoulder in a paternal embrace. " _ How proud Mr. Gottlieb must be to have such a genius for a son. _ "

The camera focuses on the Gottlieb son — he doesn't seem younger or older than he is, and yet, for some reason, Newt can't believe they're basically the same age.

"He's cute," Ji-Min says, handing Newt the joint.

Newt takes it. "Would be cuter with a better haircut," he says.

_

_ March the 3rd, 2015 _

_ Dear Dr. Gottlieb, _

_ Thank you for answering my letter. It's a real honor to be able to talk to you. It's also kind of a miracle, because not a lot of people take the time to read, least of all write letters, these days. I don't either, actually ; to be honest, the last time I picked up a pen to write something else than unreadable notes would be when I wrote a letter to Harrison Ford when I was twelve. _

_ The reason I sent you one isn't because I'm a cool mysterious guy with old-fashioned taste, I'm afraid, but actually because you didn’t have any e-mail address linked anywhere. You're free to give it to me if you wish ; I personally find it easier and way more practical, especially these days when our time is so precious, and I would like very much to be able to talk to you without worrying about postal services. _

_ I'm flattered that you had heard about me before I wrote to you. I'm actually suspecting that you lied and did a quick Google research before answering, ha. _

_ I have no idea of when you will read this, but you must be super busy, so I'm assuming you won't until a late hour, so I’m gonna wish you a good night. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Dr. Newt Geiszler _

_

Newt gets his first Kaiju tattoo on his right forearm and, despite the excruciating pain, immediately decides half of his body is gonna end up covered in those by the end of the year. He’s already talking about the next one with Ji-Min as she’s coloring it, incessantly babbling to forget he’s in pain. Anyone who’s ever told Newt that tattoos didn’t hurt was either a liar or Superman. Newt is sweating, has been ever since this started, five hours ago — this shit feels like being cut open.

He’s exhausted by the time Ji-Min’s done, but he’s in heaven. His arm looks fucking dope, but more than that, what hits him is the realization that this, right here, this is the life he wanted from the beginning. Maybe he’s delirious, high on pain and exhaustion, but it’s true — he’s a rockstar, or he’s almost one. He’s not singing or drumming or playing guitar on a stage, he isn’t recording albums that people get stoned listening to, but he’s one of the world’s only hopes, and that beats everything. He’s one of the last strings preventing humanity from falling into despair, and he’s getting his entire body covered in the creatures that are trying to make the world drown because he doesn’t have to ask for permission anymore. No one will tell him that he can’t, because he can. They need him too much — they need him to save the world so they can try to get it back on its feet.

They need him.

Someone needs him.

Finally, someone needs him.

_

_ Sent on 3/15/2015 — 11:57pm _

_ Dear Dr. Geiszler, _

_ I found this e-mail address on the Internet. I made sure it was an official page of yours, but I hope it’s still up to date.  _

_ As a matter of fact, I’ll let you know that I actually do have a taste for the old-fashioned. Although I'm neither cool nor mysterious, I'm afraid. I do like actual letters better, theoretically - but e-mails are indeed faster, and we should use that resource to communicate more easily. _

_ I don't get why you're surprised that I knew who you were: here at the Academy, everyone does. Practically everyone involved in the research field knows you. I’m sure you’re aware of that, aren’t you? Were you fishing for compliments? _

_ I checked, and the time difference is +4 on your side. Which means you're probably asleep by the time I hit the send button. Good night, then. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Dr Hermann Gottlieb _

_

_ Sent on 3/16/2015 — 03:45am _

_ Dear Dr Gottlieb, _

_ Bold of you to assume I can sleep. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Dr. Newt Geiszler. _

_

“He’s a fucking genius, Jim,” Newt says. Ji-Min makes a  _ tsk _ sound because he’s moving too much, his hands, his head, then takes his skull in her hand to put it back like she needs it to be, and resumes cutting Newt’s hair. Newt usually goes to the hairdresser now, because Ji-Min is rarely in town and he likes his hair a bit all over the place, but he can’t wait until it’s in his face and he doesn’t trust himself with scissors. Still, it’s always nicer having it cut by his best friend.

“It’s like,” Newt continues, “I don’t know how to explain it but we’re on the same page, he understands, and he’s so fucking smart, like, what the fuck? How was someone like him living in Germany and I never met him?”

“Someone’s got a crush,” Ji-Min says as she cuts, snip, snip, snip.

Newt refrains from making a dramatic turn around, because Ji-Min is holding scissors and he might die if he does that. “I don’t have a  _ crush _ ,” Newt says, and suddenly it’s like he’s fourteen again, trying to convince his friend Sofie he doesn’t like that guy from class like that, blushing and blushing and not knowing what to do with himself, and shit, he hasn’t changed at all, has he?

“Whatever,” Ji-Min says fondly. Another snip. “I’m glad for you.” 

_

_ Sent on 25/6/2015 — 02:01am _

_ Dear Dr. Gottlieb, _

_ I'm gonna have to start off topic, but I realized something and I must share it: it has hit me that we are both German. Ever since I realized that, I find it extremely weird that we only communicate in English. I'm not complaining, because I haven't spoken in German to anyone that's not my parents and my uncle for years and I probably suck at it due to lack of practice. I'm fluent in four languages and only ever use English with almost everyone. How sad is that? _

_ Anyway. I’m sending you the research you asked for in your last e-mail. I trust you will take care of it, and I know you will come to a satisfying conclusion. You’re quite brilliant, for a mathematician. _

_ Yours, _

_ Dr. Newt Geiszler _

_

_ Sent on 17/2/2016 — 10:13pm _

_ Dear Dr. Geiszler, _

_ You will be happy to know, I am sure, that your report about the Kaiju Belobog was met with great consideration by the team. I’ve been told that technicians have started working on better ways to equip the Jeagers, and we do think that the next models are going to be much more efficient, thanks to you. The Kaiju might have different appearances and skills, but being able to know what more and more of them are capable of is the only way to get better at beating them. _

_ I’m sure you have already been informed of what I’m telling you, but I wanted to personally congratulate you for your hard work. Careful with your ego, though ; vanity is bad for intelligence. _

_ Sincerely yours, _

_ Dr. Hermann Gottlieb _

_

_ Sent on 6/28/2016 — 02:31am _

_ Dear Dr. Gottlieb, _

_ I’ve just arrived at the Academy and I still need to unpack all my stuff, but I’m taking a minute to write to you before because I still can’t believe you left right before I got in. What kind of crap is this? This is unfair, and you’re a traitor. _

_ (I’m joking, of course. Go save some lives, you genius.) _

_ What I really wanted to do, I guess, is ask how you’ve been doing. And also, how is Lima doing? I’ve heard the fundraisers have reached incredible numbers. That’s good news ; I wish them the best. I wish you the best, too. _

_ I don’t really get why they aren’t sending me there, too ; it would be way easier for me to work on the field than to be sent Kaiju parts, and this is not only me wanting to be able to be closer to the subject out of scientific curiosity. There might be a little bit of that, but not only. Anyway. _

_ Hoping that fate will finally let us meet one day, _

_ Yours, _

_ Dr. Newt Geiszler _

_

They throw a New Year’s Eve party at the Academy. Pilots know they can’t drink, even if there normally shouldn’t be any new attack for at least a few weeks, according to the previsions — Gottlieb’s previsions. You never know, and you can’t afford to let an entire city be crushed to dust for a drink or two.

Newt can’t remember when was the last time he attended an actual New Year celebration. Probably not so long ago, but still, it feels like ages. He’s gotten drunk a few times, but no serious business. The drunkest he’s been these last years was that time with Ji-Min, when they launched the first Jaeger, and alright, maybe they got a little bit high too, maybe Newt stopped counting his drinks, maybe he ended up vomiting blue in his bathroom, but that was the only time.

“So you’re the guy with the six PhDs?” a voice says. It’s that guy, the one he just met, and he just brought Newt a beer. 

Newt thanks him with a nod, takes a sip, and then pretends to be offended. “Why am I always the guy with the PhDs?” he says, his voice fake dramatic. “People just can’t seem to  _ want _ to get a grasp on the real me. It’s as if I was just doctorates. I’m outraged.”

The guy laughs, a heartfelt sound that sends shivers down Newt’s spine, and oh, shit, he’s cute. The guy runs a hand through his gelled hair, and Newt takes this moment, this little, short moment when he isn’t looking to study his face — straight nose, defined jaw, slight stubble on his chin. His face looks nice. With that bowtie and that slicked-back hair, he’s probably the person that looks the most put together in the room, looking as sober as the pilots who can’t drink. Newt knows for a fact that he’s had a few, though, and he’s drinking right now.

“Alright,” the guy says. His voice is husky and low. “Sorry, sorry. Let’s start over. I’m Tendo. What’s your name?”

“Newt,” he replies. They shake hands as if this was a formal meeting. Tendo could totally bedoing formal meetings right now, the way he’s dressed. Newt is in a Fullmetal Alchemist hoodie that he bought from an artist on RedBubble last year.

“So what do you do in life, Newt?” Tendo asks, leaning back on the couch, nonchalant. “Besides having six fucking doctorates and basically being impossible.”

Newt smiles. “I’m part of the K-Science department, right now,” Newt says. “Which you can probably tell, given that I’m here and you know about the six doctorates and which ones I have.”

“Yeah, I kinda knew that,” Tendo admits. “I’m J-Tech.” His sleeves are rolled up, and from here, Newt can see the drawings that his veins create on his arms. Newt looks at people plenty, and he looks at them  _ that way _ too, sometimes, but something in Tendo ticks a few boxes that Newt hasn’t opened in a while. Christ, it’s not as if they have time to do anything pleasant, but everyone’s drinking, and maybe mankind deserves this, too. If they’re about to got extinct — but they’re not, Newt won’t let it happen — then they should let themselves have a bit of fun before it all ends, right?

“So,” Tendo says, pointing at Newt’s sweater. “FMA, huh? Good taste.”

Newt is a little drunk, Tendo is a little beautiful, and shit, he might kiss him if he doesn’t stop himself.

_

They do kiss, in the end. At midnight, Newt’s lips are on Tendo’s, their beers trapped between their two bodies in a small barrier that prevents them from being as close as they want, as close as they need, until Newt decides to put them down on the nearest surface for more comfort. He grabs Tendo’s neck, brings him to him. Tendo leans in, licks into his mouth, squeezes his waist tightly, lowers his hand, grabs his ass —  _ fuck _ . Newt’s brain and body melt, his senses tingly with booze and adrenaline. People are cheering and yelling around them, and behind the noise, Newt can vaguely recognize Janelle Monae’s part in  _ We Are Young _ . 

“I should probably tell you,” he tells Tendo when they part — they don’t, not totally, their mouths still close, still less than an inch away from a kiss, and Tendo drops one at the corner of Newt’s mouth as he speaks. “I’m not really looking for anything serious — anything at all, if I’m being honest.” He pauses. “Maybe I should have told you before we — shit, I’m sorry —”

“Hey, hey, relax,” Tendo says. His hand slides back to the back of Newt’s neck, his thumb softly brushing the place where Newt’s hair begins. His bracelets tickle the skin there, and the feeling is soothing, somehow. “Don’t worry about that. I’m not looking for anything either,” he continues. He kisses a spot between Newt’s jaw and neck. “Let’s just have fun, shall we? If you want to.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Newt agrees. He laughs nervously, and when he speaks, it’s not before another few seconds. “Wanna kiss me again?”

Tendo smiles. It’s soft. Newt melts again, even more than before. “I’d like that very much, yeah,” Tendo says, and then he does.

_

_ Sent on 1/1/2017 — 0:18am _

_ Dear Dr. Gottlieb, _

_ HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!! I’m too drunk to answer your latest mail right now so I’ll probably do that tomorrow morning but I thought about you anyway and!!! it’s the new year! and we’re in the same time zone for once, i’m not even a year ahead of you, ha! _

_ anyway, i should probably stop sorry. tonight was fun. i wish you were here _

_ have a good night _

_ Yours, _

_ Newt _

_

They crash into Tendo’s dorm around one in the morning. No one’s in bed yet, everyone too busy getting drunk, celebrating the New Year and trying to forget the world is ending. Worst case scenario, someone comes in, sees them and goes away. Newt is too drunk to care.

He pushes Tendo onto a bed he’s not sure is his. It must be, or Tendo just doesn’t care, because he doesn’t protest, just laughs and grabs Newt’s neck to bring him closer and kiss him dirty.

“You might wanna know,” Tendo says, still smiling as Newt gets him out of his suspenders. “It’s been a while.”

Newt unzips Tendo’s fly, feeling the outline of his hard cock under the fabric of his pants, then just his briefs. “How long?” he asks. He means for it to sound cheeky and hot, like Tendo’s past sex life turns him on, but it’s more to measure it to his own lack of recent activity, reassure himself. It’s been a long few years.

Tendo takes a few seconds to think, his breath hitching when Newt pulls his pants down, not-so-accidentally brushing against his dick. “Six, seven months, maybe?”

“Oh, God, that’s all?” Newt says. “And you call that a  _ while _ ? I haven’t gotten laid since the night I got my last PhD.”

“And here he is bragging about his intellect again,” Tendo fake-sighs. “Thought you didn’t want to be the guy with the PhDs?”

Newt protests. Tendo laughs.

A few seconds later, when Tendo has Newt out of his pants and in his lap, he says, “I’m gonna fuck you so good,” and then he does.

They don’t even fully undress before Tendo slips his hand under Newt’s boxers, teases him with lubed fingers until Newt is begging, which doesn’t take long because he’s that desperate. It’s been ages and Newt is drunk and overwhelmed and it feels so good when Tendo pushes his finger in that he could cry on the spot.

Later, after Tendo has fingerfucked him for long, long minutes, Newt rides him with his boxers still on. It’s not the most comfortable thing, but he wouldn’t want anything else right now. It’s the best he’s felt in weeks, with Tendo’s dick inside of him and Tendo’s finger rubbing against his clit and Tendo’s teeth on his neck. Tendo bends him down at some point, Newt doesn’t really register when, grabbing his hips to go for it,  _ really _ go for it, and starts pounding into him faster and harder than before, faster and harder than Newt has ever had it. “God,  _ God _ ,” Newt moans, feeling every move, every inch of his cock inside of him — 

His mind empties completely when he comes, his brain reduced to a white burst of pleasure and the vague consciousness of Tendo still hitting that spot inside, his fingers still pressing on his clit, sending flashes up to his head and shivers down his spine. There’s a moment, a few seconds maybe, that he misses, because he’s on his hands and knees before he can understand what’s going on, facing the bed, Tendo still fucking him from behind, and it’s too much,  _ too much _ , but he still comes a second time, still clutches the sheets, ripping them apart, biting into a pillow and drooling all over the fabric. He still comes, and it’s even more blinding than the first time, and for a moment he thinks he’s not going to recover from this.

“Jesus fuck,” he mutters after, drunk and delirious. “Jesus  _ fuck _ , you’re  _ good _ . You’re fucking awesome.”

“Fucking awesome yourself,” Tendo says.

He can hear Tendo’s smile. He also hears him pulling off the condom, presumably, then fumbling with his stuff on the floor, then lighting a cigarette. Which is not allowed in the dorms, but he doesn’t remember having sex being allowed either, so it’s not like it’s the first rule Tendo has broken tonight.

When Newt opens his eyes, he sees Tendo leaning against the wall, naked chest glowing with sweat, hair falling before his eyes, lips kissing the cigarette. He looks fucking stunning, and Newt wishes he could watch longer, but he can’t.

“Oh, you haven’t seen shit yet,” Newt mumbles, realizing too late that he should have replied a minute ago. “Tomorrow, I’m blowing you until you can’t think straight.

“Sounds nice,” Tendo says. His voice sounds calming against the sheets.

Newt falls asleep.

_

_ Sent on 1/1/2017 — 0:46am _

_ Dear Dr. Geiszler, _

_ Happy new year to you, too! I would say that I wish you’re having a good night, but I think I can tell that you’re not doing too bad after your last message, ha. I only drank one glass of wine myself, but that’s for the best. I’m afraid I’m kind of a lightweight, and the sight of my drunk self is not a pretty one to see. _

_ I’m gonna head back to the party, but not for very long. I’m feeling pretty tired, and I still have work to do tomorrow. Whether we like it or not, there’s no time to rest during a war. _

_ Sorry to be a killjoy. Maybe I should drink more, after all. I would be of funnier company. _

_ Wishing you a good night, _

_ Hermann _

_

Because Newt is a man of honor, he always keeps his promises. Even when said promises were made in a drunk, half-high, fucked out state. He goes down on Tendo in the bathrooms next to the canteen after lunch, exhausted and hungover but happy to please, and also, unofficially, because it has been very,  _ very _ long time since he’s done that, and pretty much any kind of action could get him off these days. Being on the giving end has always been a turn on for him, anyway.

It doesn’t last very long, which is best for both of them considering the exhaustion. Tendo buries his fingers in Newt’s hair, whimpers when Newt does that thing with his throat, trembles for a full minute after his climax. Newt swallows, and there’s a thumping at the back of his head, but it still feels good, doing that. He had missed it.

He gets up on his feet again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You wanna do this again sometime?” Tendo says, finding his breath again. Newt grabs a piece of toilet paper, cleaning what’s left of saliva and come on himself, checking for stains on his clothes and finding none. “I’m not asking you out,” Tendo adds after a few seconds, because Newt still hasn’t answered. “I remember what you said and I still stand by what I told you. I don’t want a relationship.” Tendo tucks his pale blue shirt back into his pants, zips the zipper, buttons the button. “But casual sex? I wouldn’t mind.”

Newt doesn’t really think before talking and saying “yeah, that sounds cool,” because it does. They’ve got something nice going on here, something that works. “Let’s do that,” he adds, because again, the world is collapsing, was on the brink of extinction long before the first kaiju attack. So they might as well make the best of what’s left of their lives. “Let’s do that.”

_

_ Sent on 1/1/2017 — 11:01am _

_ Dear Dr. Gottlieb, _

_ I’m so, so sorry about my last e-mail. I re-read it and I feel really, really stupid. Like you can’t imagine. I shouldn’t be allowed to have my phone in my possession when I’m drunk. That should be a law. Not that I particularly stand by the law. Anyway. _

_ You shouldn’t have talked about you being a lightweight, because now I kind of really want to see you wasted. If that makes you feel better, I don’t exactly handle alcohol well either. I’m just irresponsible. We should get drunk together, one day, though. We’d both be stupid, but we wouldn’t remember it in the morning and our dignities could be preserved. Maybe we can do that when the apocalypse is over. To celebrate. Who knows. _

_ I hope you’re doing good on this first day of the year, by the way. I can’t say that about myself ; I am, unsurprisingly, hungover as hell, and I was supposed to be at the lab two hours ago. Working is going to be a nightmare, but I guess I can only blame myself for this one. As you said, no rest in times of war. _

_ I’m gonna have a shower, a big glass of water and a coffee, and then I’ll get to work. I promise I will take the time to finally answer that mail you sent me three days ago if my headache hasn’t killed me yet. _

_ Have a good day, _

_ Yours, _

_ Newt _

_ PS: I was gonna sign this as I usually do, but I noticed you finished yours with “Hermann,” so I went back to see where it started and I saw it was me who initiated it in my drunk text. I think I would have freaked out a bit if you hadn’t followed, but I can now say that I am happy that we’re on a first name basis, even if it wasn’t the best way of starting it. It’s so little, a tiny formal to informal change, but it somehow matters, I think. It’s safe to say that I’ve been considering you as a friend for a while now. Should I start my e-mails with “Dear Hermann” or is that crossing a line? _

_

_ Sent on 10/29/2017 — 06:23am _

_ Dear Newton, _

_ I’m happy to read that your transfer to Los Angeles went well. I don’t think there is any chance we will meet there, sadly — but keep me updated on what is happening where you are. I am always interested. _

_ I am still working on determining the nature of the breach. If this was a face to face conversation, I could tell you more about it, but while I do trust you, I don’t trust the Internet. Especially with information that could save or destroy the world. Maybe one day I can voice those theories to you. _

_ Actually, I am authorized to take a week-long holiday for Christmas and New Year’s Eve along with some other scientists as long as most of us remain in the Shatterdome. Although I don’t celebrate Christmas, I can barely recall the last time I stopped working to see my family, so I think I might accept the opportunity to go and visit them in Munich. I have no idea about your permissions and if you even have some these days, but in case you happen to be visiting your peers in Germany, would you like to meet? _

_ Maybe it’s a little bit odd to ask you about this after so much time spent talking and never seeing each other. Perhaps it is too late to meet in person? Anyway. I still thought I would offer. I don’t want to pressure you to accept, but I must say, I would be happy if you did. _

_ Yours, _

_ Hermann _

_

“He wants to meet,” Newt says in the middle of breakfast with Ji-Min. She’s taken him to her favourite place in Los Angeles, the one she always goes to whenever she’s in the city. She hasn’t really stopped moving for years, travelling everywhere around the world, being invited to tattoo shops and conventions, meeting people, sleeping on their couches and opening makeshift salons in their basements. She’s one of the most famous tattoo artists there is, Ji-Min — she could open her own parlor and everyone would travel to get inked by her, but she’s always hated the idea of settling down. She still has her place in LA, though. She’s got a special room for clients in it, and little coffee places she always goes back to spread out around the neighbourhood.

“Oh,” Ji-Min responds. She’s chewing on shortbread, some crumbs falling from her lips to her chin as she speaks. “Really? When?”

“‘round Christmas, during the Holiday break,” Newt says. “What should I do?”

Ji-Min shrugs. “I don’t know, man. Go ahead, I guess? You’ve been wanting to see the guy IRL for fucking  _ ever _ . Maybe you can confess your crush.”

“I  _ don’t _ have a crush on him,” Newt protests, too fast, _ too fast. _

“I think it’s kinda cute,” is Ji-Min’s response to that.

“I’m not cute,” Newt objects. “I’m a badass motherfucker.”

When Ji-Min picks up her cup of tea to have a sip, Newt can see a smirk behind it. “Of course you are,” she says.

_

Newt picks one of his favourite places in Berlin — a small, cosy, vaguely hipster cafe in an equally small street near Alexanderplatz. He orders two caramel lattes before Hermann even arrives, because he got there thirty minutes in advance just to be sure, too scared his bus would get stuck in traffic or just too impatient to be there. The caffeine kicks in — it’s never been good for what he has, but he’s never been keen on taking care of himself that much. He sends Ji-Min three texts, plays a dumb little game on his phone because she’s in LA so probably sleeping, checks his Twitter feed, opens the game again, opens Instagram, closes it — 

Then Hermann walks in.

Newt recognizes him immediately, would have even if he hadn’t spent yesterday night stalking his Facebook. Hermann is quite the character. His parka is covered in snowflakes, wet where the snow has already melted, and his hair is ruffled because of the hood he just took off. Newt waves at him when their eyes meet, and Hermann waves back, smiling, as he joins Newt at his table.

Newt smiles, too.

_

“Hi,” is the first thing that Hermann says. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” His eyes are tired and kind, and when he shakes Newt’s hand, his touch is gentle and warm.

_

“Goodbye, Dr. Geiszler,” is the last thing that Hermann says. “Let’s agree to never do this again.” It would have hurt less had he yelled. Hermann gets up, grabs his still wet parka, leaves five euros on the table and leaves without finishing his drink.   
  


_

“I hate him,” Newt says. “I fucking hate him.” His fingers are all red and freezing where they aren’t covered by his mittens. 

“Oh,” Ji-Min’s voice replies from the other end of the line. “That… that went downhill quickly.” She sounds groggy. She was sleeping, obviously, fuck, and he didn’t even think about that before calling her, fucking shitty friend that he is — “Newt,” Ji-Min continues. “Don’t freak out. I wasn’t sleeping, ok?” She knows him, of course she does. She knows him better than anyone else. “What happened?”

Newt swallows. He’s cold, cold, cold. “He’s a dickhead,” he snaps. It doesn’t come out angry and bitter like it was meant to, but pathetic and weepy as he realizes he’s crying, and shit, he can’t fucking stop now.

“Oh, Newt,” Ji-Min says. “Newt, I’m sorry, shit. What happened?”

“I don’t even know, Jim.” He doesn’t know where he’s going either. There’s no way he’s going back to his dad’s place in this state — him and Illia would ask too many questions, they always do. They haven’t seen him crying in too long. That can’t happen now.

Everyone around is looking at him. Shit.

“It’s just —” he starts, fighting back the sob that tries to break free, “it was weird talking to him in person, you know, and —”  _ don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t you fucking cry _ “it was kinda awkward and not the same as it always had been but I told myself that it was normal, that we just needed to learn to talk to each other and that takes time, alright, good, but then I took off my sweater because I was fucking sweating, and he saw my tattoos, and you should have seen the look on his face —”

God, he doesn’t have anything to wipe his face with. He must look disgusting.

“I can’t believe he fucked up everything just because of the fucking tattoos,” Newt says. “He told me he thought I was better than that, that it was gross and inappropriate, and then it escalated to the rest and me being — different altogether, not like he thought I was, I don’t know, he didn’t —”  _ he didn’t listen, and he left, _

_ he left, _

_ he _

“He left,” Newt croaks out. “He left.”

“Newt,” Ji-Min replies. “Alright, he — he misunderstood about the tattoos, you knew that they were gonna be easy to misunderstand. Not just for him — for everyone. But they’re just tattoos. They’re just that. It’s — it doesn’t mean everything is ruined between the two of you. It’s a detail. You can send him another e-mail and explain. Today doesn’t have to mean that it’s over.”

But Hermann left.  _ He _ left. Not Newt. That must mean something, right? It must mean something. “You weren’t there, Jim,” Newt says. “The stuff he said —” He’s sobbing again,  _ shit _ .

“Alright.” Newt hears the flick of a lighter and smoke being blown. “Alright. Just — calm down for now. You’ll figure out what to do later, alright?”

Newt has stopped walking. He’s in the middle of the Alexanderplatz, tears freezing up on his face , snot running down his nose, snow sneaking into his Dr. Martens, his feet are cold, cold cold.

There’s no Kaiju attacking the world today, and there won’t be any for another few weeks. It’s the end of the world, still.

_

_ Draft saved on 1/1/2018 — 00:03am _

_ Dear Hermann, _

_ I don’t even know why I’m writing to you  _

_ im not even gonna send this I have to be careful not to press the send button ha _

_ one year ago I was writing the same kind of drunk text to you and I felt dumb but I felt safe because you answered in the end and you didn’t think i was a dumbass  _

_ why would you think I’m a dumbass now? I can’t stand this _

_ My dad and uncle have gone to sleep and im alone and drunk and miserable. Only a few weeks ago I told my best friend how id love for her to meet you one day because you’re two very different people but youre both super interesting and i would have loved that, you probably would have loved that, although im not so sure now since you decided to be an asshole for no reason all of a sudden but shes one of my favourite people in the world and you were one of my favourite people in the world too why did you have to ruin everythin _

_ i feel like i never really knew you _

_ did i ever know you? _

_ i keep opening my mails app for work stuff and expecting a message from you. then i remember that we’be stopped talkin and that i wont see nothing from you ever again except if you decide to apologize and you know what i would go with that because i miss taking to you so much i would forgive you people make mistakes and i still would want to but you wont i know you wont im angry and sad and upset all the timr and this is all your fault fuck you fuck you fu _

_ fuck you _

_

Newt gets assigned to the Hong Kong Shatterdome on his thirtieth birthday. He’s never been one to believe in anything like destiny or a God above them, but maybe this is a sign. Maybe the universe really does have a scheme for him, after all. Maybe it’s part of the Grand Plan. This is where the real shit happens — this is where Newt becomes a hero. He’s turning thirty today and the future of mankind is in his hands.

He doesn’t go to sleep when he gets there. He’s been awake for twenty-five hours, but it’s ten in the morning, he’s got work to do, and jetlag’s never stopped him before. He’s  _ got _ to work, even if the Marshal is telling him to go get some sleep, even if he has permission to. He’s stronger than this, more than human, he will keep going if — until — it kills him.

“Alright, then,” the Marshal says. “I’ll show you your lab,” he says, “and introduce you to your partner.”

When Marshal Pentecost opens the door to the lab, Newt sees a skinny figure bent over a computer. The guy is wearing glasses and a brown cardigan. Newt recognizes him the second his eyes fall on him. He recognizes him before he even properly sees his face, before anything at all.

“Dr. Gottlieb,” Pentecost tells Hermann —  _ Gottlieb, Dr. Gottlieb _ , loudly enough for the other man to hear him from the other side of the room. “This is Dr. Geiszler. I assume you two have heard about each other’s exploits.”

Gottlieb’s eyes go round behind his glasses. Of course they do. Newt must look the same — in shock, paralyzed.

Then the anger kicks in. In both of them.

“I have more than heard of him, yes,” Gottlieb says as he takes a few steps across the room, holding onto his cane, to reach their level. 

Newt’s jaw clenches. Gottlieb hasn’t changed a single bit.

“You two know each other?” Pentecost asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yeah,” Newt replies quickly before the word has time to turn into something else, something not professional at all, something he will regret. “It’s been a while,” he adds.  _ It’s been a while _ , instead of  _ we used to be friends _ , or  _ he ruined it all _ , or  _ I was lonely and then I wasn’t and then I was again _ .

Gottlieb offers a handshake. Newt looks at his hand, his pale, long fingers, then up at his face. He isn’t smiling.

He remembers the first time they shook hands. It could have gone so well, and they could have been so good — they  _ were _ so good. Once. Forever ago.

“Glad to see you’re in good health,” Gottlieb says.

Newt takes Gottlieb’s hand. “Same,” he replies. In another timeline, a parallel universe maybe, they’re hugging, happy to see each other again after so long. They didn’t part ways, they just didn’t have time to cross the road to each other. Their words are genuine, not resentful and bitter. 

In a parallel universe. Maybe.

“Well,” Newt says, to Pentecost. “I think I’m gonna have to listen to you in the end, Marshal. I, uh — I really need to take a nap. Guess I overestimated myself, huh.”

And he gets out of the lab.

Pentecost catches up with him fast enough — Newt gets turned around by a strong hand before he registers it clasping his shoulder. 

“Geiszler,” Pentecost starts. “I don’t think that I have to tell you that. But this lab, this entire place —” he gestures around them, the metal and concrete on the walls and floor, “this isn’t middle school. And I don’t have time for your disputes.” He looks at Newt like he’s expecting him to say something. “I have no idea what’s going on between you and Gottlieb and I don’t give a fuck. But I’m expecting the both of you to be adults about it, and it better be soon. Because you’re gonna work together, Geiszler. There’s no changing the plans there.”

They are gonna work together.

Of course they are.

Newt doesn’t know why he’s surprised, and can’t believe he didn’t think of it before — most of the scientific department left since the Jaeger Program stopped being funded. They - Newt and Gottlieb and a rare few others - are the last ones. Of course  _ he _ would be amongst them. Of course.

“Yeah,” he gives in, and it comes out sounding like a sigh. “Listen, it’s not — I just need to sleep, alright? Just an hour or two. I’ll get to work soon.”

The look Pentecost gives him says that him going to sleep is not the problem and Newt knows it. He isn’t believing any of this bullshit, but he doesn’t speak until Newt does again.

“It’s not gonna be a problem,” Newt says. “I swear. We  _ are _ adults, we are — we don’t need to be friends to work together. There won’t be trouble.”

But they were friends, they were good friends, they were something.

“I damn well hope there won’t,” the Marshal says. “Alright,” he adds. His voice is as gentle as Newt has heard it, and probably as gentle as he can manage at all. “Get yourself together.”

As if that had ever happened before. “Yeah,” he replies, then heads back to his room.

_

Working with Hermann turns out not to be that hard — it’s the opposite of pleasant, but hard is not the right word. It’s annoying, more than anything, but not hard. It stops being so, anyway, as soon as it stops hurting. 

They can’t stand each other, of course, and the only times they speak are when they really  _ have _ to, improvising meetings with the other scientists or screaming at each other in either English or German or both. That part is kind of a pain in the ass to the others, and Newt is very sorry, but you can’t expect him to stay calm when Hermann does or says the shit he does or say.

But it doesn’t hurt anymore, no. It’s a bit tense, sometimes, but most of it is bearable. They’re at war, they have to work through it. End of story. It doesn’t hurt anymore, because even when it’s not bearable, it’s angry and violent and ugly to look at. It was only sad when Newt had still something beautiful to think about, and he’s not expecting anything now. He hasn’t been expecting anything of Hermann since he sat in that little café in Berlin, in the middle of winter, forever ago.

That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

_

One day, Newt walks into the lab to find a young girl sitting next to one of his colleagues, watching her work. The kid is an anomaly in their weird little lab, a piece of composure and prettiness in this messy, smelly place. With her straight black hair perfectly in place and her light pink sweater, she looks like a teenage dream in a world of chaos. Newt wants to ask her if she’s lost, because she must be, but all he has to do is stare for a little bit too long before the girl notices and says: “I am the Marshall’s daughter.”

“Oh,” Newt replies. “Oh, hello.” Marshall’s daughter or not, Newt still wonders what she’s doing here, but it’s obvious, really. Everyone’s interested in what’s going on, and she happens to have permission to see what they are doing to try and fix the apocalypse. Of course she’d come here at some point. He walks towards her, offering a hand. “I’m Newt.”

The girl doesn’t take his hand. “I know who you are.”

“I’m sorry I can’t say the same,” Newt says. “I knew the marshall had a kid, but I’m afraid I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Mako,” the girl replies.

That’s when it clicks in Newt’s brain, and he remembers.

Mako. Mako Mori. The marshall’s kid. Of course. Mako Mori, who lost her entire family in a Kaiju attack at the age of seven, who ran from Onibaba, who was chased for hours and hours, crying, alone and looking for her parents even though she had seen them getting brutally slaughtered. The only living girl around, saved by one man in one Jaeger, an impossible thing for an impossible child.

And Newt is standing in front of her, bare forearms displaying drawings of the very same kind of monster that stole her life, like a fucking idiot.

Mako looks down at them, but she doesn’t flinch.

“So,” she says, looking at Newt’s face again. “What are you researching?”

“We’re, em,” he begins. It feels weird, suddenly. Newt has met a lot of people — people whose lives have been destroyed by this war, but Mako is what, seventeen? He knows what his tattoos mean to him, but he doesn’t have it in him to explain them to a teenage girl who lost everything at the same age Newt was building his first circuits.

“We’re studying Kaiju,” he says. “This division, my division, I mean. That’s what we do. Hermann, right there, he studies the breach.”

“Dr. Gottlieb,” the man in question sighs with irritation.

“Dr. Gottlieb, right,” Newt rolls his eyes. “But yeah, that’s my job. Analyze Kaiju to find ways to fight them off.”

“Can I see?” Mako asks.

And Newt probably shouldn’t do it, but he shows her anyway. He’s always been passionate about sharing his work, and he doesn’t know how to say no to a kid who asks. Especially if it’s her. It feels special, somehow, even if he doesn’t know this girl.

He tells Mako about the last part they found, very different from all the others but very similar too, and he tells her about how hard it is to find a surefire way to injure  _ any _ Kaiju, not just the last one they found. He tells her about the difficulty of finding any way to get them down that doesn’t involve ripping their flesh apart, about why they can’t build giant guns or giant swords to kill them, at least not if the fighting happens in a city, which it often does.

“Because their blood is toxic for the environment and people,” Mako says.

“Exactly,” Newt agrees. “That’s not my job, though. That’s for more qualified people. I only collect and analyze data.”

“Don’t minimize your work. They couldn’t build anything without you collecting and analyzing data.” She pauses. “They say no one knows them like you,” she adds then. “The Kaiju. They say you’re the expert.”

“It’s true, I guess…” Newt doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t know  _ what _ he could say. He chooses this particular moment to roll down his sleeves, suddenly even more uncomfortable than before.

“You don’t have to,” Mako says.

Newt looks at her.

“A lot of people think you’re kind of —” She stops there, looking for words, but Newt can tell it’s not because she’s struggling with English.

“Don’t preserve my tender feelings.” He tries to make it sound like a joke.

“Kind of a maniac,” Mako continues. “They say that a man that isn’t serious — that doesn’t take his image seriously, shouldn’t be left to run the most important part of this war.” She’s now looking at some of his files, messily spread over his desk. “I think they’re wrong,” she says. “And also kind of stupid. It makes no sense to me to judge the capacity of a person based on their appearance. You’ve done wonders to help us in this war. I don’t think you would have if you really wished for the world to be eaten alive by Kaiju.”

She turns to him. Only then does Newt notice the blue highlights in her hair. It’s discrete, delicate and unique, like her.

“Am I wrong?” Mako asks.

Newt shakes his head. “No,” he replies, laughing nervously. “No, you’re not. It’s just that I’m not used to that kind of response.” He smiles. “I’m glad that you — get it. They’ve looked very indelicate to a lot of people before. I didn’t get them just to piss people off, but, you know, they — tend to do that.”

“May I ask why, then?”

“It’s a reminder,” Newt says. “Of what I’m working for. It’s because they fascinate me, too, of course. Like, it would be lying to deny that — I always believed something like them existed, but it being a reality is so much bigger than anything I could have imagined as a kid, you know? So there’s some of that, some kind of like — scientific interest, whatever. But it’s also telling me to keep going. To not let our world lose to them.”

On the other side of the lab, Hermann is working on some things Newt will probably have to pick on later. The lab isn’t that big, and Hermann isn’t that far. If he’s paid as much attention as he does when he corrects Newt on the use of his first name, he’s heard all of that.

If he had listened — if he had wanted to listen, three years ago, maybe they wouldn’t be in this situation. Maybe they would still be friends. It’s stupid, how that silly little thing ruined everything.

Mako takes a look at Yamarashi on his arm, studying the twirls of color, the details. “My best friend did them,” Newt says. “She’s like, super talented. Her name’s Ji-Min — I’m sure you’d like her.”

“They’re really well done,” Mako nods. “I think they look beautiful.”

“You hear that, Herms?” Newt yells in his direction. “Someone’s got taste!”

He thinks about starting a fight about that, later. “If a seventeen years old girl who’s seen hell can understand, then why couldn’t you?” he’d say. But he won’t, because that’s not a good idea. It wouldn’t be fair to use Mako’s story to his advantage. It isn’t about him.

Newt gets to work soon enough, and Mako leaves him to it to visit the rest of the lab. She goes to Hermann and sits there, listening to him explaining stuff about tangents and probabilities and everything. Newt hasn’t heard him being that passionate in a long time. Newt hasn’t  _ heard _ him being passionate at all, actually — he’s read him through e-mails, trying to figure out what his voice would sound like, what intonations, what accent. 

He’s a good speaker, Hermann — awkward, and kind of embarrassing to look at, but he’s eloquent and clear and organized. It’s a tragedy that they’ve stopped talking, really, because Newt would have loved for Hermann to talk to him like that. All they do these days is ignore each other and start screaming when it becomes too much, but Newt still stands by everything he’s said in those e-mails years ago, still thinks Hermann is a genius with a fascinating mind. Sometimes, Newt would lie down in his dorm at the Academy and think that the existence of someone like Hermann was way crazier than Kaiju or whatever else bullshit that could ever have happened. 

He still stands by that, too. He just avoids thinking about it too much. 

When Mako comes back to him, humming along to Yellow Submarine playing on the radio, Newt realizes he’s stopped doing — whatever he was doing, he doesn’t even know. He turns to see Hermann, who Newt expects to be back to his own business, but he isn’t.

They share a look.

Then they get back to work.

_

  
  


Sometimes, they’re alone in the lab.

Most of both teams stay there late, way after they’re supposedly free to go, because there’s work that needs to be done. Most of the time though, they all leave before Newt and Hermann do, and most of the time, Newt and Hermann stay much, much longer after that. Newt has slept on his desk more times than he can count, these days. He never remembers when Hermann leaves the lab or comes in, being more or less asleep everytime that happens.

One morning, he wakes up to the sound of something being put down on his desk, next to him. He regains consciousness slowly, but fast enough to see Hermann’s back as he walks back to his own part of the lab. Newt looks around — nobody else is there. It must be early. He looks down, then, at what’s been left on his desk. It’s a mug full of coffee.

He dares a glance towards the other end of the lab. He sees Hermann putting his glasses on, taking a sip of his own drink. He doesn’t look at Newt, doesn’t say anything, so Newt doesn’t either.

He picks up the mug and drinks it. It tastes like usual, but different.

_

Newt hasn’t seen Tendo in forever when he learns that he’s being assigned to the Honk Kong Shatterdome. They’ve kept in touch, vaguely, texting each other to know what’s up, making sure the other is alive without ever asking it that directly, but nothing much.

When they meet again, they hug, which feels better than Newt would have imagined. He never realizes how much he craves contact until he gets a taste of it, and it’s so rare that he’s learned to ignore the feeling, but this is good. Tendo’s embrace is tight, and he smells like he used to, and it’s good.

“How’ve you been?” Tendo asks, their faces close as they separate, hands still on each other’s backs. Tendo’s shoulders are broader, his face a bit tired, his hair longer. He still slicks it back, though. He also continues to wear his shirts with suspenders and bowties. He’s still warm and charming in a weird way that Newt could never really grasp.

“Good,” Newt replies. “Good, God, it’s been ages,” he adds. “You? I heard you got fucking married, Jesus — how’s Allison?”

“Fine. She’s — very pregnant, actually. Seven months.”

“Jesus,” Newt exclaims. “Congrats! God. I can’t believe you’re gonna be a dad.”

“Yeah,” Tendo says. “Me neither.” He’s still got his hand resting on Newt’s neck, and it’s just like it was years ago, when they first kissed at midnight for the New Year, like teenagers wishing each other good luck, or like secretly terrified grown people trying to forget that they might die too soon. “You wanna go for a drink?” Tendo asks. “Or are you too busy saving the world?”

Newt laughs. “I mean, I have assistants to do my job for me, but isn’t it a bit irresponsible? We’re at war, sir.”

“Well, I’ve got assistants too, Geiszler,” Tendo replies. “And it’s been fucking forever, so you’re gonna let me buy you something, alright?”

They laugh. Then they go get drinks.

_

They end up crashing in Tendo’s room with two sodas, too afraid that they’ll be needed for something to actually go out. They’re both off duty for the time being, but they’re never really off duty, even if they both have people to take care of everything while they’re not there. That many years spent working on solving a problem that big doesn’t exactly teach your brain how to take a moment of rest.

“We’re in an open relationship, actually,” Tendo tells Newt as they’re lying in his bed, sipping on their drinks. “After she broke up with her ex and we got together for good, she realized she didn’t like monogamy, and with the job I have, it’s not like we see each other that much, so we tried. And I’m okay with it, honestly — I wasn’t sure about it, but I don’t mind her seeing other people as long as she comes back to me, and it’s the same thing for her. We love each other. That’s what matters.”

Tendo lights up a cigarette. They’re not supposed to smoke in their rooms, but everybody does, and everybody knows that everybody does. It’s a secret that’s not really a secret, and Newt isn’t even sure anyone would scold them for it. Even the marshall probably knows, but he’s not a monster, or at least not as much as people seem to think he is. So he lets them live a little. He’s much less indulgent when it comes to drinking, but no one is stupid enough to do it.

Newt misses booze — and smoking — more often than not. He never was a big drinker, but having the possibility of emptying his mind from time to time was a luxury he had taken for granted until he didn’t have it anymore. Even if drinking wasn’t de facto forbidden, he doesn’t have  _ time _ to, and what if something happens and he’s drunk? As for the weed, it’s not like anyone here could provide him that. Anyone that he knows. He’s sure there’s plenty of people passing drugs and getting high in secret when it’s safe. Newt can’t blame them.

This is good, though. Just sitting here with Tendo, their legs tangled over the bedsheets as Tendo quietly blows some smoke. Intimacy is something Newt misses much more than alcohol or weed. He tries to think about how long it’s been since he last saw Ji-Min. It was last year. There’s no time for that kind of things, there’s no time to have a life. If he can have an hour or two with Tendo before they both go back to work, even if it’s the last time until another year, he’ll take it.

“That’s awesome, dude,” Newt says. “I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah,” Tendo nods. “Thanks.” Newt steals the cigarette from his hand. God, he hasn’t smoked a cig since the Academy. “So, you know,” Tendo continues. “I don’t know if you’re like — still up to that kind of thing, but I’m still — here. Available. If you wanna.”

It takes Newt more seconds than he should to realize what Tendo is saying. But it makes sense that he is. Their knees are touching on the bed, and Newt remembers how it felt to be with Tendo, years ago, to get lost and to forget, just for a little bit.

“I am,” Newt says. “Still up to that kind of thing, I mean. I am.”

Tendo smiles. He takes the cigarette from Newt again, takes a deep drag, then stubs it out in the little metal box under his bed he uses as an ashtray.

Then he pushes Newt against the bed.

Newt hasn’t been touched in years. Last time he had sex with someone was with Tendo, too, and it was a while ago. It’s not that he hasn’t thought about it, he just never lets his mind wander for long enough to consider actively looking for sex with someone. 

They don’t have a lot of time, but they can have this. Tendo has strong hands that grip his thighs like the world is ending, as it is, and a way of moving his body that is nowhere near decent. He knows where and when to push to drive Newt insane. He fucks him on his back with Newt’s leg bent over his shoulders, still wearing his pants, his shirts, the suspenders and all, and it’s so hot seeing him like this that Newt could easily have come from that alone. 

He doesn’t, though. He comes from Tendo’s cock inside of him and his fingers rubbing his clit, and Tendo won’t stop moving in him, even after Newt’s orgasm. Newt laughs in ecstasy, because it’s been so long, but Tendo is still generous, still pushes and pushes and pushes until they both can’t move anymore, even when it’s supposed to be a quickie.

When Tendo’s done and they’re both panting against each other, Newt hugs him. His hair is a bit sticky with gel and sweat.

“Your wife is a very, very lucky woman,” Newt says.

Tendo laughs — a tired, sad little laugh that dies against Newt’s chest. “Yeah,” he replies. “I think I’ve fucked you more times than I’ve fucked her. So, you know. You’re the lucky one.”

They don’t speak for a moment. Newt checks both their phones on the nightstand without moving Tendo from where he is on his chest — everything alright, nothing to signal. Newt tries to relax, pissed that he’s already so tense after such good sex, but something isn’t right. 

Tendo usually talks more.

“Are you ok?” Newt asks.

Tendo doesn’t look up. “I’m fine,” he says after a while. He gets up then, pulling out of Newt in the process. He promptly takes the condom off, ties it, throws it away. Then he puts his hands over his face. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” Newt starts, moving to a sitting position next to Tendo. “It’s ok.” God, Newt doesn’t know how to do this. He never was good at that. “It’s ok. You wanna talk?”

“It’s fine,” Tendo says. But nothing seems to be fine, these days. “It’s just — I don’t want you to think I’m like, using you to forget about my shit. I just — I like being with you, and it does help taking my mind off — things. And I just feel like an asshole, because here I am, running to you as soon as there’s an occasion when I haven’t been taking any news from you in  _ years _ .”

“Tendo,” Newt cuts in, as quietly as possible. “I haven’t exactly been talking to you either. Times are — what they are. Shit is hard. We’ve got things to do, and we take a little bit of rest from that where we can. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“I just don’t want you to think I’m using you.”

“I don’t think that,” Newt replies. He’s usually the one breaking down. He isn’t used to taking care of people in this way. Not often. He’s usually all over the place, all the time — maybe people just don’t trust him to handle this kind of situation. They wouldn’t be wrong. Even Ji-Min never allows herself to be too sad in front of him, even though Newt has had a thousand mental breakdowns in her presence. Maybe he really can’t be trusted to be good for people. 

He still tries, though. Whenever it happens, he tries.

“Alright,” Tendo sighs. He pauses. “I’m sorry.”

“Dude,” Newt says. “Don’t apologize. Really. It’s alright, ok? We’re friends. You can talk to me.”

Tendo exhales, his breath shaky. 

Then he talks.

Tendo tells him about how he misses Allison, how they barely even saw each other last year. She sends Tendo pictures of her belly growing and she sends him funny lists of names that she knows he won’t approve of, and Tendo knows she does it to cheer him up, to give him something to work for, but it makes him sad most of the time. It makes him sad, because it’s a reminder that he won’t see the birth of his kid, that he’s pretty sure he won’t be able to see them grow up. He often thinks about the life he could have had. About how stupid he had to be to believe he could ever have something nice in a world like this one. He feels guilty for bringing a child into it, because what will there be left for them, after everything?

He starts crying, later. 

Newt doesn’t know what to do — what could possibly do in the face of this? — so he hugs him tight. He doesn’t let go until Tendo is better, even if he’s not  _ better _ . They have to stick with just a little bit. They don’t have time for the rest.

_

One day, Pentecost tells them the others are gone. Newt and Hermann both know that, or at least they knew about most of them. It’s not like they couldn’t see the lab emptying week by week since the last attack. Some told Newt goodbye, saying they were sorry — most of them just disappeared, though. Stopped coming. Whatever.

The marshall tells them they have a choice in this, too. He’d rather have them here, of course, says the program needs them. “But I can’t force you to stay. I’d rather you know it — the Jaeger Program is falling apart. We aren’t getting anything anymore. We don’t know how to keep this going.” Newt knew about that, too. Tendo had told him. The others had told him. It’s something else to hear it from Pentecost, though, but he knew. “So you’re free to go.”

Newt looks over to Hermann, who doesn’t see him, or doesn’t want to.

They both stay in the end.

_

From that moment on, they’re alone.

_

“Don’t you ever eat?” Newt asks Hermann during lunch time. He’s brought back some bland potatoes and stew from the canteen. It’s been a while since he last ate anything from the outside — maybe tomorrow, if he finds the motivation.

Hermann doesn’t even look at him as he answers. “Not in the bloody lab,” he says. Spits. Barks. Newt doesn’t even know anymore.

Their relationship has gotten worse since both teams have dissolved, which Newt expected. It’s not like anybody was actively trying to tame them, back then, except for Pentecost if he happened to enter the lab during an argument. But the presence of other people to work with, to talk to, was enough to distract them both from ripping each other apart.

“Well I don’t ever see you leaving it,” Newt spits back.

“Like you pay attention,” Hermann mutters.

But Newt pays attention. And Hermann hasn’t been leaving the lab at all, these days.

Not that he cares.

_

The next evening, Newt comes back from his quest for food with two pizzas instead of one. He rarely ever goes outside for food, despite takeaway tasting much, much better than whatever they serve at the Shatterdome. It takes forever to get into town, and it’s not like Newt has even one hour to spare every evening.

He really was craving pizza tonight, though. And Hermann never eats, so.

Not that it’s any of his business.

“Herms,” he says when he enters the lab. “Come eat.”

Newt puts both boxes down on his desk and takes off his leather jacket. It’s  _ pouring _ outside, and he’s soaked from his hair to the inside of his boots. Some droplets fall from his hair in front of his eyes, and yeah, speaking of that, he can’t see much with all that water on his glasses. It gives him an excuse to ignore the questioning look on Hermann’s face when he looks up at him.

“In what honor?” Hermann asks after a while. It should sound mean, sharp, as it often does, but it just comes out confused.

It’s not a big deal. They do this — things like this, anyway. They have coffee together in the lab, share moments sitting next to each other at the canteen. Little truces, insignificant moments of peace when they don’t really say anything but don’t really fight either. Considering the state of their relationship, it’s big.

Maybe Hermann is right to look at him funny right now. This is bigger.

Maybe it’s a bit of a big deal.

“You never fucking eat,” Newt says. “Come on.”

Hermann considers it. Newt expects him to protest, because they’re in the lab and Hermann is a rigid little thing when it comes to that.

But Hermann just sighs, gets his cane and crosses the room, walking towards Newt’s desk.

“Take the chair,” Newt says. “I’ll sit on the table.” 

Hermann still looks at him in confusion, but sits down anyway, putting his cane down on the floor in the process. Is he wondering if Newt is pranking him? Because Newt wouldn’t — annoy him, yes, at all times, but he wouldn’t buy someone dinner as some kind of sick joke. Doesn’t Hermann know he’s not like that?

“Took you a margarita,” Newt says. “Plain. Didn’t know what you liked.”

Hermann looks down at the pizza as Newt opens the box. “Margarita’s fine,” he says. “Thank you.”

It’s been years since Hermann has spoken these two words to Newt. Newt is pretty sure he hasn’t ever heard him say them out loud.

They eat in silence, after that. It’s less awkward than Newt would have imagined.

_

The morning after, Newt wakes up to another cup of coffee in front of him. 

He takes a second or two to get up. His whole body aches, his back especially, and maybe he should get back to his room more often, for his own sake. Not that the mattress is that comfortable, but it’s not a desk, at least, and it allows him to lay down. It’s only when Newt gets up to stretch his arms out that he realizes he’s got something covering his shoulders. 

It’s Hermann’s parka. It smells like rain and chalk. The fur that’s on the hood is tickling Newt’s neck where it meets the skin.

Newt looks around and sees that Hermann is not here. He looks down again, then, and sees a slice of bread with butter and jelly. Did Hermann go to the canteen just to get him breakfast before leaving?

Newt grabs the coffee and drinks. He eats the sandwich, too. It’s not that bad.

He keeps the parka on until he hears the sound of Hermann’s footsteps coming back.

_

Things haven’t really changed, but they have. 

They haven’t changed, because they still argue all the time, they still don’t share anything except for their research, they still don’t make any effort to have anything other than what they’ve always had — what they’ve had since Berlin, at least. Newt still wants to murder Hermann most of the time, still leaves Kaiju guts in Hermann’s part of the lab on purpose, just to piss him off, and Mako still laughs at them for being such children everytime she hangs out in the lab.

But things have changed, because it has become a habit for Newt to bring food for them to eat together in the lab on some nights, because he wakes up to fresh coffee and a breakfast almost every time he falls asleep at his work. Newt had stopped minding Hermann’s presence in the lab before, because he had to, but now he might admit - if under great pressure - to actually liking having him around. Part of it is because it’s just better than being alone, because it’s human to look for company, and he doesn’t have anyone else left in his lab. But there’s a part of Newt starting to think that Hermann is not so terrible.

Things have changed, because sometimes, when they eat together, or when Hermann bends over Newt’s desk to take a look at his notes, Newt wants to reach out and touch him. Nothing much, just... slide his hand over his, get to know what his skin feels like against his fingers. Maybe more.

Things have changed.

Things have changed, and it’s terrifying.

_

It’s dark when Newt wakes up.

He doesn’t see Ji-Min, at first, both because of the dark and his terrible eyesight. It’s only when he puts his glasses on that he notices the half-opened balcony door, and the silhouette of his friend, smoking outside.

Getting up feels pretty fucking painful — that’s what you get for getting your entire chest inked in one go. He doesn’t unwrap the cellophane covering the fresh tattoos as he grabs one of Ji-Min’s hoodies in her opened suitcase and puts it on. He also takes a cover from the bed that he puts around his shoulders before he joins her on the balcony.

The air is chilly but not cold. Still, he’s all weak and tired from the session. The blanket is more than welcome.

“Don’t bleed on it,” Ji-Min says as she blows out some smoke. She’s leaning over the railing, her gaze turned towards the city.

Newt looks down at the sweater. He hadn’t noticed, but it’s an MIT hoodie from their years back there, red with the logo in white in the center of it. It’s weird to remember that Ji-Min spent years at that university before becoming the renowned tattoo artist she is now. Newt wonders how many people know about that.

“It’s red,” Newt replies, shrugging. Ji-Min scoffs. 

Newt takes a look at the view, then. Hong Kong by night is bright, a colorful mix of neon stains on a dark canvas. As sleepless as he and Ji-Min both are. Newt has been here for years but has only got to experience this view a handful of times. He doesn’t usually get to see much more than concrete and white lights. Sometimes ruins, too. Ruins and blue guts.

He leans over the balcony, careful not to get any part of his upper body too tensed up. 

“I know I’m not in any position to say anything,” Ji-Min says. “But — you never wonder, sometimes, if all of this is of any use?”

Newt turns his gaze to her. She’s cut her bangs short. Her hair is tied, showing a bright pink undercut. She’s only wearing a grey hoodie and black panties.

“All of what?” Newt asks.

“Everything. Trying to save the world. It’s not that what you’re doing is useless, I’m not trying to say that, or whatever. Again, I’m in no position to say anything. I just draw tattoos. I don’t know shit. You’re a fucking hero.” She takes a drag on her cigarette. “It’s just — sometimes I feel like all of this is too big. Literally too big. It’s above us. And I feel like trying to fight it can give us a few more years, but we’re gonna lose eventually.”

Newt has thought about it. Of course. Never too long, because he can’t afford not to be restless. He has to try. But he’s thought about it.

“I think,” Newt says. “That humans wouldn’t have made it this far if they hadn’t tried the impossible to survive. We’ve made a lot of progress as a species to stay alive that long.”

“Funny how that always ended up fucking the planet over a little bit more,” Ji-Min points out.

“Yeah,” Newt replies. “I guess you’re right.” Ji-Min fishes her cigarette pack out of her hoodie to light a new one. She hands it to Newt, offering. He refuses. “We have to try,” Newt continues. “Even if it looks impossible.”

“Is it worth it though?” Ji-Min asks.

Newt shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t want to die, personally.”

Ji-Min lights her new cigarette. “Me neither,” she says, exhaling the smoke. “But maybe we’re supposed to.”

_

Pentecost is standing straight above a few dozens of Jaeger pilots when he announces the program is on tracks again. Mako is at his side, standing just as straight, definitely looking older than when Newt met her, but still so young, too young to be included in all of this mess. She’s been wanting to be a pilot since before they met ; probably since after Pentecost saved her in that Jaeger, years ago. Newt can’t blame her ; he was in college at fourteen. He knows what it is to be too young to do what you do and do it anyway. It’s just that his life then included less apocalypse and death. The circumstances are different.

Rumor has it that Pentecost won’t let her pilot, though. Mako would hate him if she knew, but Newt hopes it’s true. Because she’s young, because it’s Mako. Because he couldn’t stand having to watch a screen where she dies inside of a big robot.

“The Jaeger Program is back on its feet,” Pentecost says, and Newt knows it’s not really true. Tendo knows everything that goes on, and Newt always finds a way to make him talk about most of it. So when the marshall says that, Newt knows it doesn’t mean they’re being funded again. It means that Pentecost is going to launch a couple Jaegers out there to try and fix things for good. What that means and how he’s going to do it, even Tendo doesn’t know.

“I know he’s got something in mind,” Tendo told him a few days back. “he didn’t really say anything, just that — something radical had to be done. And he’s not wrong, I mean — it can’t go on like this, we’re clearly losing here. The attacks are multiplying, and these fuckers come back quicker than our men can rebuild the Jaegers. Doesn’t mean Pentecost’s gonna get anything from the government, though. They don’t give a flying fuck about the program — not anymore. All they believe in is the Wall.”

The Wall is bullshit, and pretty much everyone knows it. Scared citizens try to persuade their kids it’s going to protect them, and jobless veterans in need of money do what they can to help building it because they need to eat. It doesn’t make it any more useful.

So Pentecost is going to ask them to do something impossible, then. For a few days after his speech, Newt overhears conversations, speculations about what it could be. Newt, on the other hand, already has an idea in mind.

He’s not surprised when Pentecost visits Hermann and him, Mako still at his side, saying: “Gentlemen. I have some work for you.”

_

When Newt drifts with a Kaiju brain, all he sees is chaos. Images of the end of the world as they know it flash in bright colors before his eyes, so fast that it’s too much to take, so much that he can’t comprehend it. He sees an entire race that they couldn’t have begun to think about. Through their eyes, he sees their plans — through his own, he thinks about ways to defy them. It’s the most bizarre, mind-blowing, terrifying experience he’s ever lived through.

He still has shivers down his spine hours after, as he’s walking through the streets of Hong Kong with his head still buzzing and his eye still twitching. He has to do more. He has to do it again.

He has to save the world.

_

The thing is, Newt didn’t expect Hermann to help him or even approve what he was trying to do when he first drifted. He’s never surprised about them disagreeing — it’s just how it is. He’s not expecting anything from Hermann now, either.

But Hermann is there, standing in front of Newt, offering his help and his brain to share. “That’s what Jaeger pilots do,” he says. “They share the neural load, right?”

“You’re serious?” Newt stutters out. “You would do that for me? Or — you would do that with me?”

“Well, with worldwide destruction a certain alternative,” Hermann offers, grinning — what the fuck? “Do I really have a choice?”

Newt could kiss him. God, he could kiss him.

It hits him, then. What’s been there for the last few months. What’s been there since the beginning. He looks in Hermann’s eyes and it hits him, how in love he is with him.

Newt doesn’t kiss him. He offers his hand instead, and when Hermann grabs it after struggling like an idiot for way too long —  _ God _ , Newt loves him — it’s like coming alive. He’s gonna get inside a giant alien hive mind for the second time today, and yet, Hermann’s hand in his might be the craziest thing that’s ever happened to him.

_

When they drift, Newt sees the breach and the creatures inside of it and a way to destroy them. He also sees a kid with glasses and a bad leg, alone in the school yard ; a lonely boy writing numbers on a blackboard ; a young man writing e-mails on his laptop, in between two phases of research or at night, alone, his face dimly lit by the screen in the dark. He sees a place where all hope has been lost, sleepless nights spent working to avoid thinking about everything else, even when things hadn’t become a matter of life or death yet. He sees loneliness, so long and so exhausting, and heartbreak, and love,

and love,

and love.

_

When they save the world, Newt barely hears the cheering about them. His brain has trouble processing anything at all, now that they’re safe. It might be due to drifting with a mind much bigger than his  _ twice _ , but it also might be that he’s still stuck in his and Hermann’s thoughts. Maybe it’s just that the adrenaline rush is over. Maybe everyone is feeling like that, a bit light-headed and out of the world, because it’s been years learning how to deal with the world ending and now it’s finally over. Maybe Tendo is giving Newt a tap on the shoulder because he needs to get a grip on reality too. Maybe Mako and Raleigh, wherever they are in the middle of the Pacific, don’t feel like they exist in this world right now. They’ve been fighting for so long, and it’s  _ over _ .

Newt still cheers and greets everyone around him. He takes Hermann in an embrace when he gets closer to him, and it doesn’t feel like just a touch. It’s multiplied, electric. Maybe it’s the drift, or maybe it’s just them. Newt’s mind is racing, but oddly enough, he feels at peace for the first time in fucking forever; here, with Hermann against him, holding his hand now, smiling like Newt has never seen him smile before, relieved and exhausted and happy, and Newt loves him. Maybe that’s why he can’t focus on anything, as ridiculously sappy as it sounds. Maybe it’s that simple.

Newt closes his eyes, then. Very briefly, just for a few seconds. He wants to remember this.  _ This _ . He can’t lose this.

_

They leave the party early. It’s a shame, because Newt would have liked to have the energy to celebrate properly, but he might faint if he doesn’t lie down somewhere and sleep very soon. Hermann is tired, too, understandably. They agree on the fact that the whole planet is probably going to celebrate for weeks at least. They can catch up later. Newt can, at least. Hermann doesn’t like parties that much. It’s fine, though. Whatever works for him. They’ll go for dinner — something nice, just the two of them. They’ll drink expensive Champagne and then go wherever home is, hand in hand, and Newt will kiss him properly to make up for all the years he spent not doing it.

He asks Hermann if he wants to sleep in his room without giving it a second thought. He doesn’t mean sex, and Hermann knows that; both because they’re still kind of in each other’s head and because he can see they’re both too exhausted to do anything physical right now.

They’re barely touching as they fall asleep, but it’s enough. They have time, now. To talk about it. To do whatever they want to do. They’re curled up against each other in Newt’s crappy bed, side by side, and it’s enough. It’s more than enough.

_

They don’t talk about it the morning after.

_

They don’t talk about it at all.

_

Newt kind of loses track, after that.

_

He wakes up with blinding white lights piercing through his eyes and his nose bleeding. There’s a buzzing noise in his right ear. 

“Newt?”

That voice. He knows that voice.

He turns his head ; his body doesn’t follow. He’s bound to a chair, he realises.

It’s Hermann. The voice.  _ Hermann _ .

There are two Pons on the floor, and Newt’s brain is full of buried memories coming back to life. They just drifted. That explains things.

“Newt,” Hermann says. He reaches out to touch Newt’s face but stops mid-track, putting a gentle hand on Newt’s shoulder instead. “I need you — I need you to tell me if it’s you. Really you.”

Around them are other people. Newt recognizes them, but it’s like he doesn’t  _ know _ them. 

“Hermann?” he mumbles. His throat is sore. It hurts like hell. “What the fuck is happening?”

Something is off. Not just with this situation, him tied up and Hermann looking at him like something terrible happened, but him. Him, feeling things he doesn’t remember like ghosts sending shivers down his spine. He doesn’t remember getting here, but he did something. It’s obvious, he knows he did something, knows that he —

_ Fuck _ .

“What happened?” he asks again.

The look on Hermann’s face says that he might cry. He looks exhausted. Older, too. 

“Newt,” Hermann quietly whispers. Nobody says anything, and if they do, Newt doesn’t hear them ; the buzzing noise in his ear is still loud enough to make it hard to understand Hermann alone. “You have — your brain has been infected,” Hermann says. And he knows, Newt can tell. He knows that Newt feels,  _ remembers _ , deep down. He can’t really place it, but it’s there. Newt knows. “You haven’t been yourself for the last ten years, Newt.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this fic or have any feeling to share about it, consider telling me in the comments!
> 
> [art blog](http://robomori.tumblr.com/) / [ personal blog](http://robomind.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/robomori)


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